


The Shallow End

by whimsicule



Series: Stories of recovering minds [1]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: AU, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-22
Updated: 2013-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-06 02:37:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/730613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whimsicule/pseuds/whimsicule
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kun may or may not be in love with him. He's a fool either way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For dreamofthem and the_wild_son, who were always rooting for these two and requested their history to be told. Set in the same 'verse as "By the Rio de la Plata", but stands entirely on it own. Feedback is much loved.
> 
> Warnings: Recreational Drug and Alcohol abuse

*****  
**

**"I had gone to no such place but to the smoke of cafes and nights when the room whirled and you needed to look at the wall to make it stop, nights in bed, drunk, when you knew that that was all there was."**

  
― Ernest Hemingway, _A Farewell to Arms_  


 

***

 

There is something peculiarly perverse about life. A strange fluidity, ever-moving forward relentless and unmerciful. It strikes us with a numbing force and the knowledge we are nothing but mere puppets in the greater scheme of things. It makes us all desperate, in one way or the other. Some struggle against the current, some let themselves drift along, quite content to let it run its course, because they know they do not stand a chance.

People are thrown together like colourful marbles in a child’s play and they collide and sometimes they break, sometimes the tumble away into a crack and find themselves utterly alone.

Some people call it family, friendship; some might even call it love.

 

Yet if you think this story is about either – then you are mistaken.

 

 

***

 

 

He is not a good person. The fact that he is aware of this does not make it any better, is no excuse in any way. But he doesn’t pretend to be a saint, to be anything he is not. Still he wonders from time to time how different it could be had he done anything about it back then.

 

 

***

 

 

The air is heavy. A sweet, sharp scent is clinging to the wads of smoke drifting around his head. The girl next to him stumbles and spills her drink, giggles and continues to stare ahead aimlessly. There are white smudges around her nostrils. He evades her grabbling, sticky hands and moves towards the bar, cigarette tugged between his lips, letting the smoke hit the back of his throat and circle down towards his infested lungs. He reaches the counter, knocks onto the wet surface once and sees the bartender’s eyes turn towards him instantly, then he nods. But he doesn’t receive his drink, at least not before he feels fingers curling around his shoulder, nudging him around.

 

“You shouldn’t just disappear on us,” Javier tells him with raised eyebrows.

 

“I felt like it,” he replies without a fuss, taking the glass placed onto the counter for him and downs its content in a heartbeat, liquor pleasantly burning as he swallows.

 

“It’s your birthday, Pocho. We’re here to celebrate with you.”

 

“You’d be here for something else if it weren’t for that,” he says because it’s true. They don’t need an occasion to go out and drink and fuck, they will make one up if they feel like it, and his birthday is no reason for him to celebrate. In fact, Pocho would much rather leave, go back to his empty apartment and empty a bottle of vodka on his own to pass out and sleep through the next few days.

 

“I don’t know why you’re in such a bad mood. Didn’t you have enough to drink yet?”

 

Of course he’s had enough to drink, technically. He’s got a high level of tolerance though, and the light-headed feeling wears off quickly, leaving him with a skin that’s too tight and an overall anxious feeling in his gut. Pocho needs far more than alcohol to take the edge off.

 

“I’m bored, all right? This place is just fucking depressing.”

 

“It is if you stay down here,” Javier says and motions for him to follow and when Pocho doesn’t move, he places a firm hand between his shoulder blades and pushes. “I didn’t spend a grand on closing off the first floor for you not to be there.”

 

“You better not have gotten me another present, Javier, or I swear I’ll –”

 

“I’m sure you’d be utterly creative in your punishment,” Javier breaks him off. Pocho can’t see his face, but it sounds like he’s smiling and in a far better mood than he is. “But not to worry, no presents. I wouldn’t know what to get you anyway. A new pool table? Esteban says you broke yours, and please don’t tell me how.”

 

“Esteban is a lying shit,” Pocho scoffs as they ascend the stairs, dodging two beefy bouncers who don’t spare them a single look but do their best to shield off a couple of girls trying to follow them. “If it’s broken then he’s the one who fucking did it.”

 

There is a small crowd gathered on the first floor overlooking the main part of the club, glass walls allowing a proper view of the people below. Pocho knows all of them, has known them since his early childhood but rarely does he see them all in one place. These days he meets up and goes out with Javier, Esteban, Walter, Gabriel and maybe Martín, barely more. The others are – not strangers, but also not familiar enough (not anymore) for him to feel entirely comfortable being surrounded by them. Fortunately for him, he’s already done the compulsory round of greeting and small talk and he quickly finds something else that catches his eyes.

 

He plants his elbow between Javier’s ribs. “Who’s that?”

 

Javier blinks a few times before catching on. “Who? Oh, you mean Kun.”

 

“Kun,” Pocho repeats numbly. “What kind of name is that?”

 

“Says the one who likes to be called Pocho,” Javier comments dryly, but continues nonetheless. “He’s Agüero’s kid.”

 

“Really,” Pocho muses. “Wasn’t he, like, twelve?”

 

“Was, yes. He’s almost eighteen now. Just graduated, in fact, doesn’t go out much. He’s friends with Higuaín and Garay. They should be here somewhere too, actually. I brought them along.”

 

“Did you,” Pocho stays where he is, but he lets his eyes wander. Kun, he thinks as he takes in the boy’s – because that’s what he still is – appearance. Jeans and a black t-shirt, some plaid thrown on top like a South American heartthrob, hair short and diamonds sparkling in his ears; every piece the young millionaire’s son he is. Yet his eyes – his eyes are the thing truly holding Pocho’s attention, such a dark brown they appear almost black, big like suit buttons and so painfully wide open and innocent that despite actually belonging here, he seems incredibly out of place. His face is young and bright with a wide smile that tells of a jovial and carefree life.

 

It makes him feel sick to his stomach.

 

“Have you fucked him?” He ignores the look Javier gives him.

 

“He has a girlfriend,” Javier says and Pocho huffs out a laugh.

 

“Like you have Paula?”

 

The silence that follows stretches for too long to be very comfortable, but Pocho has never been a friend of treading cautiously, of beating around the bush and if others can’t deal with his bluntness, then that’s their problem not his.

 

“Fuck you.”

 

Pocho shrugs. “Maybe some other time. I know how to say no to you,” and then he crosses the room, happy to tell himself that he is just being a decent host by saying hello, knowing full well that’s not true in the slightest. He guesses Javier just shouldn’t have brought him, guesses it would be better for Kun to leave right this moment. But Pocho isn’t a good person; and he doesn’t do the right thing.

 

He takes a long, deep drag of his cigarette, lets the smoke circulate down to his lungs and back up again, then blows it out through his nose. Flicking the ash onto the ground and leaving Javier behind, Pocho starts to make his way across the room. The floor is slippery and sticky with spilled liquor, wet patches scattered all over it from big champagne coolers dripping melted ice. He grabs an opened bottle from one of the coolers, drops his cigarette bud in it and hears it hiss as it dies out, lifts the bottle to his lips; swallows. It’s not strong, and far too sweet for his taste, but it stills his thirst for the moment, sets his mind back into focus, icy liquid sliding down his throat, waking up his senses. Pocho holds the neck of the bottle tightly, lets it drop to his side.

 

Halfway across the room, those dark button eyes flick up and brush over him and they linger. A pleasant buzz makes rolls up his spine and Pocho is perfectly aware of the effect he has on people like Kun, like he’s some foreign being rising from the shadows. They’re from two different worlds and Pocho wonders what will happen if they collide.

 

Kun, he repeats in his mind once more, trying to figure out how it will feel on his tongue once he says it out loud. He is standing on his own, surrounded by people, yet still alone and Pocho allows himself to drink him in; jersey stretched across a muscular frame, honed by exercise (football, Pocho thinks, it’s always football, curse of this country, River and Boca, blue skies and white clouds), dark-washed jeans, sparkling studs that probably cost as much as a small car. Oh yes, so utterly lost, with no clue what to do.

 

He stills mere inches in front of him and raises the bottle to his lips again, keeping their eyes locked.

 

“Having fun?” he drawls, alcohol making his voice rich and heavy and already, he can see Kun clinging to his lips. Sometimes it’s just too easy.

 

Kun stumbles over his own tongue a few times before he can say, “Yes, I mean – of course. Thanks for, you know,” and he gestures about as if it were a more elaborate explanation. “Happy birthday, by the way, I –”

 

Pocho takes pity. “Don’t mention it,” he cuts him off before Kun can stutter his way into a dead end and make himself unattractive. “So. Here with Javier, huh?”

 

A blush, faint but there and he has to suppress the urge to roll his eyes.

 

“Kind of,” Kun says, wiping his palms on his jeans, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he swallows. The pink in his cheeks suits him like it shouldn’t, softening his already young features. “He’s just… My father thinks it’ll help – figuring things out. After school and all. He says Javier is a good influence.”

 

“I have no doubt.”

 

It’s a gift, Pocho thinks, which Javier has. The appearance of a saint, voice like honey, charming his way into every heart and out of every last bit of trouble. It is almost curious to see everyone fall for him, insects trapped in a jar, slowly burning away in the sun. Such a waste.

 

“Still living with your parents, I gather?” he asks, holding the bottle out for Kun to take it. Kun does, hesitantly so, and he takes only a small sip.

 

“Hoping to move out, actually,” Kun replies, too quickly for it to sound casual.

 

“I own a few places in the city.” Out of the corner of his eyes, Pocho sees Gabriel by the door, his angular face even sharper in the artificial lights shining in different colours. He nods, and Pocho answers with a quick motion of his hand. Then he leans in. Kun smells of expensive cologne and sweet champagne and Pocho can practically feel the warmth radiating off his skin as he drops his lips to the shell of Kun’s ear.

“If you’re getting tired of good influences, I might even show you around myself.”

 

He retreats before he feels tempted to linger, turns around before he can soak up the stunned expression in Kun’s face. He follows Gabriel out the door and then he leans in again and lets himself drown and when Pocho resurfaces, the sun is already up, flooding his bedroom, so he rolls over, away from the other bodies and sleeps until it’s set.

 

 

 

***

 

 

Pocho doesn’t mean to forget. He just – slips off his radar. Perhaps because he was never on it before. Pocho wasn’t brought up with care and he wasn’t brought up to care about others and he’s not a good friend, he doesn’t keep in touch, doesn’t compromise.

 

He is born to an Italian artist slash heiress and an Argentinean businessman. They name him after his father and his father’s father and his father before him. He spends the first couple of years of his life in Genoa, Napoli, then Paris, moved around like a piece of furniture, carried from place to place like a suitcase. His father is in Buenos Aires, London, New York, Tokyo and his mother turns nights into days, carves patterns into marble and then onto her own skin. Pocho learns the meaning of _avant-garde_ and Picasso’s _Demoiselles d’Avignon_ before he watches his first cartoon and has a first taste of chocolate.

 

It doesn’t take long for their marriage to shatter like one of the countless bottles that get emptied each day. His father leaves Europe for good (and he would never go back) and his mother locks herself away and once or twice a week, she brushes a paint-stained hand across his face with an expression bordering between affection and contempt. When he is eight, he sits in the corner of the bathroom of their Ritz suite and watches how his mother cuts her wrists. The water flows over the edge of the tub onto gold encrusted tiles as she goes still and pale and her blood is as red as the wine she drank with every meal and every minute in between. He sits in the corner, looking at her lifeless form floating in the bath, until one of their maids bursts through the door.

 

Pocho is shipped back to Argentina, not knowing whether to speak Italian or French, not knowing a word of Spanish, not remembering his father’s face at all (he doesn’t remember it now) and then not seeing him enough to get familiar with it again. He gets sent to a private school, doesn’t make friends because he has no clue how children behave. So he starts carrying chalk around in his pockets, finds abandoned corners in the schoolyard, and draws erratic patterns onto the concrete.

 

His father dies only three years later. Pocho finds himself left with a distantly related uncle and a senile grandmother he never sees either. The only steady presence in his life is an over analytical shrink he doesn’t talk to. He shuts himself in his room with chalk and coal and paint and starts covering the floor, the walls, the ceiling, and sometimes he rubs coloured fingers across his skin and tries to remember his mother’s face.

 

Whispers follow him in the hallways. They say he killed his own mother and drank her blood. They say he is the cancer that sent his father to the grave. They say he is already dead.

 

He thinks they’re probably right.

 

 

 

***

 

 

“I don’t like Picasso.”

 

Pocho raises his brows and looks at Javier out of the corner of his eyes. The lights are dimmed, the room empty except for the comparably small painting in front of them, black frame drawing a sharp contrast to the white plastered walls. He shrugs.

 

“Well, I’m not asking you to buy it,” he says, returning his gaze to paint strokes and blue hues. “I’m quite fond of his earlier work.”

 

“How much did you pay?” Javier asks.

 

“Fifty-seven.”

 

“Thousand?”

 

“Million,” Pocho replies, putting his hands into the pockets of his worn jeans, slung low on his hips. There’s a trickle of paint that’s dried on his left thumb and he rubs over it with the tip of his index finger.

 

Javier snorts. “Fifty-seven million for that? I’m no expert, but doesn’t that seem a little overpriced? My TV is bigger than that.”

 

“It’s a Picasso. _Femme aux Bras Croisés_ , painted in 1902,” he says, eyes wandering over the woman’s shape in the painting, skin a pale blue, dark curls tied loosely in her neck, bony fingers curling into the crook of her elbow, an empty and nevertheless hypnotic stare going into an unknown distance. “She’s supposed to be an inmate from Saint Lazare’s prison. A lunatic.”

 

“Charming,” Javier comments. “What are you going to do with it? Sell it to the highest bidder?”

 

“I don’t know,” Pocho muses, tilting his head, stepping closer. “I might keep it. It’s got something, don’t you think? Happy Birthday to me.”

 

“If you say so. If you’ve got another fifty million lying around, how about adding a Monet to the collection?”

 

“Monet makes me want to hurl.”

 

“How eloquent,” Javier says with a smirk to his voice. “Enjoy your present to yourself. And don’t forget about tonight,” and echoing footsteps tell him that Javier is walking towards the door.

 

“Will Martín be there?”

 

The steps die out. Pocho glances over his shoulder and sees Javier mirroring his movement, bright and sharp eyes locking with his. They stay silent for a moment or two. Then the corners of Javier’s mouth twitch.

 

“Of course.” Then he reaches for the door handle. “Don’t be late.”

 

 

 

 

Pocho loses track of time. He always does, it doesn’t particularly matter to him if he’s late or not, and he knows that it doesn’t matter to anyone else either. He’s important enough that people wait for him whether he’s two minutes late or two hours. And tonight, the others are most likely too hammered to even notice his absence. He climbs the stairs to Javier’s townhouse, all windows illuminated and spilling warm light onto the street. It’s a quiet night, not completely dark yet, a haze of orange surrounding the feathery clouds, a pleasantly warm breeze rustling the trees; normal people are probably heaving a civilised glass of wine at home, or in a restaurant, because it’s the middle of the week.

 

But they’re not normal. If there is such a thing anyway.

 

The door is unlocked, and Pocho pushes it open. In the hallway, he tosses his jacket onto the floor, pulls a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and lights one up before heading for the living area. He can already hear the noise, not as loud as some might expect, and he runs into Esteban before he can reach the living room. Esteban tips an imaginary hat at him.

 

“You’re late,” he says and Pocho rolls his eyes as they push through the door together. The scene unfolding in front of them is a familiar one; two or three handfuls of guys lounging on the sofas, or standing around, glasses or entire bottles grasped tightly in their hands or already raised to their lips. “Javier says you bought a Picasso.”

 

Pocho grabs the nearest standing drink, not even caring what it is, and chucks it down in one go. “Javier needs to minds his own fucking business,” he comments with a burn in his throat and sets the glass down with a clank.

 

“Something get your panties in a twist, Pocho? Do you need to get laid?”

 

“You offering?” he quips, lowering his voice to a level he knows will be just slightly uncomfortable for Esteban, who has the decency to blush, making Pocho bark out a laugh. “Don’t worry, darling. I don’t want to get into your pants.”

 

Esteban gives a curt shake of his head, not able to suppress a slight smirk, then lifts his glance and nods ahead, subtly pointing. “What a shame. But I can see someone who wants to get into yours.”

 

Pocho follows Esteban’s eyes across the room. He can see Walter chatting to Gabriel; Zaba, Nicolás and Hernán smoking in a corner; Diego and Gabriel glued together like fucking Siamese twins, close to Javier and – ah, Kun. If he remembers correctly (like already said, things tend to slip off his radar).  Kun, who is obviously not paying attention to anything Diego is saying, but is blatantly looking at them, at him, and Pocho can see how his throat works as he swallows, gaze unsteady but focused nonetheless. He’s lost the plaid shirt, fortunately, and is clad in dark jeans and a white t-shirt. Pocho isn’t blind, he can appreciate that Kun is certainly someone to look at. Still.

 

“I don’t fuck virgins,” he says and turns back to Esteban.

 

“Apparently he’s going out with one of Maradona’s daughters.”

 

“So what?” Pocho shrugs. “I’m not interested.”

 

“Javier says you are,” Esteban murmurs.

 

“Javier seems to say a whole fucking lot. He’d do well to shut up once in a while.” He finishes his cigarette, tosses it into the open but unused fireplace, and takes out two more, offers one to Esteban. “He’s got Sexual Identity Crisis written all over his face. I’m not getting into that just because button eyes over there thinks he’s bi-curious.”

 

His words make Esteban quietly chuckle to himself, but Pocho is dead serious. He has absolutely no interest in playing agony aunt to some adolescent guy who can’t put two and two together. Which doesn’t mean he wouldn’t enjoy watching Kun squirm a bit. If he’s being entirely honest to himself, it’s endearingly pathetic to watch his attempts to subtly stare and drink him in. Maybe not so bi-curious after all, Pocho thinks to himself as he starts moving across the room, but in the closet nonetheless and since he’s never really been in it at all, he doesn’t have much patience for those who struggle coming out of it. He doesn’t like that some people have to be dramatic about every bloody aspect of their lives.

 

Kun almost chokes on his drink when Pocho makes a point of holding his gaze as he approaches. He flicks Diego’s neck, makes him squeal and flinch and turn around with glazed eyes before a broad smirk spreads across his features.

 

“Man,” he calls, drawn out and for some reason deliriously happy. “I love you, man.”

 

“What the hell did you feed him?” He asks once he’s patted Diego on the back with a dry smile, and Gabi has pulled his brother to the side to make some more space in their misshapen circle.

 

“He started early,” Gabi tells him. “Yesterday, I think? Girlfriend broke up with him.”

 

Pocho huffs. “Again? That’s seriously becoming a pattern.” He isn’t looking now, but he feels eyes on him, burning into the side of his neck like a too-bright sun in the middle of summer.

 

“’s why I’m going gay,” Diego lulls and stumbles. He’d surely be colliding with the floor if it weren’t for his brother keeping a vice-like grip on him and Diego is straight like an arrow, so must be pretty hammered to say that. And what follows. “Oi, Pocho. Why don’t you paint me like one of your French boys?”

 

There is a choking sound and Pocho turns his head to see Kun coughing, face red from his drink presumably going down the wrong pipe. Javier is empathically clapping him on the back, biting back a smile, eyes catching Pocho’s and holding them. He breathes, once, twice; then pulls his attention back with a soft shaking of his head.

 

“I would, Diego,” he answers with a grin plastered onto his face, “but you’re too fucking ugly.” Says it and walks through their middle, drawing another cigarette out of his pocket, makes a bee-line for the terrace, still hears Kun quietly rasping behind him.

 

Pocho pulls the glass door shut behind him and takes a few steps out into the garden, deeply inhaling the smoke welling up. There is a dark, almost black line of trees bordering the comparingly big rectangle of grass behind the house, considering they’re in the middle of the city. He can see a few bright patches of light peeking through the foliage; substitutes for stars dimmed out by an illuminated city that hosts millions of people. The breeze is swiftly growing cool, tickling his senses awake, and making everything seem far too sharp for his liking. Pocho flicks the smouldering remainder of his cigarette onto the grass, listens to it hiss as it touches the damp ground and is extinguished completely.

 

He stands still for a moment or perhaps longer, muffled noises echoing towards him from the inside of the house as he waits for everything and nothing to move and to stop. With a sigh (although Pocho does wonder why he sighs at all just seconds later), he reaches into the back pocket of his jeans, retrieves a small packet and empties its remaining contents into his open palm. He counts one, two, three, four; shrugs, and swallows them all dry. The pills trail an itchy path down his throat, but Pocho is used to it. The effects aren’t immediate. Nevertheless he stays and waits; waits for the numbing tickle to start up from his fingertips.

 

Pocho doesn’t know what time it is when he hears footsteps, only knows that he suddenly finds himself sitting on the ground, fingers digging into wet earth. He doesn’t need to look up, is far too familiar with the way Javier moves about, lowers himself down next to Pocho fluidly, his long limbs stretched out, skin smooth and dark in the absence of daylight, yet profile still sharp against the backdrop of the lit up house. Pocho studies him for just a moment, imagines every brushstroke that makes up this masterpiece, this blinding perfection, sometimes so unreal that he wants to dig his fingers in and smudge.

 

“You’ve been quiet recently,” Javier says.

 

Pocho knows this tone. The underlying – not accusation, but something of that sort, and it always sounds like one out of Javier’s mouth. “I’m talking to you right now. In fact, I talked to you earlier today too.”

 

Javier doesn’t look at him; doesn’t need to do so to make his words clear. Pocho hates that he is the only one who can make him feel as young as he actually is. “You know that’s not what I mean. I’m saying you’re withdrawn. Even more than usual.”

 

“Oh my, do you want me to paint out my feelings and read you my diary?”

 

Steel blue eyes pierce into him. “I’m being serious.”

 

“So am I,” Pocho replies, hands digging deeper into the grass, collecting dirt underneath his fingernails. “What the fuck, Javier? I just want some bloody peace and quiet once in a while, not dozens of people hovering over my shoulder every day. It’s –” and he breaks off.

 

“It’s what?” Javier insists.

 

“It’s crowded enough in my head already,” he snaps. “I just need some fucking room to _breathe_ , all right?”

 

He doesn’t give anything away, just stares at him blankly and Pocho fights back the urge to squirm away from him. He draws up his hands, wipes his dirty palms on his jeans and distractedly traces the black lines running up his arms. He barely notices them these days, so much already part of his being that they barely catch his attention in the mirror.

Javier keeps looking, silently urging him to spill and it just drives him _insane_ ;this way Javier has about him, this calming and yet equally unsettling presence, this endless patience to just wait it out, no matter how long it’s going to take. Sometimes Pocho really wants to hit him square in the face; wonders if it’d be satisfying or twistedly painful.

 

“You should talk.”

 

Pocho laughs soundlessly. Not even a fucking question. “To whom? Diego? Gabriel? _You_?” He snorts. “Right, because everyone here but me has got it together. Seriously, Javier, can we stop now? I don’t have the nerves for this.”

 

“Sure we can stop,” Javier says, and he senses a _but_ coming. “But I’m worried. Are you still taking –”

 

“Yes, I’m still fucking taking them,” Pocho cuts him off. “Don’t mix well, though,” he adds with a lopsided, bitter smile. “Haven’t slept all damn week.”

 

Suddenly, a warm, heavy hand settles against his neck, just below his hairline and the touch is irrelevant, perhaps even thoughtless and yet it feels more intimate than the touches that have left marks on his skin in the nights he cant find rest. Javier’s thumb is sitting right behind his ear with subtle pressure.

 

“You should stay over.”

 

Pocho looks at him with raised brows, sceptical. “Paula not here?”

 

“She’s in Santa Fe for the week,” Javier replies easily, hand settling firmer against Pocho’s skin, thumb stroking down towards his jaw, subtly angling his head. “She is worried too, you know?”

 

He lets himself be pulled in, stops inches away from Javier’s face. “Is this her idea?”

 

“It might’ve been.”

 

Shaking his head, he says, “She’s too good for you,” and bridges the gap.

 

Open and waiting, their mouths collide, lips sliding together in an unhurried way. Non-fussed, undramatic and without frills. It drowns out the noise in his head, empties the clustered space between his temples and replaces everything with wadding, softening the blows, rounding off the corners, turning heavy into light. It’s familiar; it’s an extension of something that’s always existed between them, no label and no definition, no explanation at that, and definitely no strings, but there nonetheless. They get each other like that.

 

No sudden rise or fall, the pressure in his neck stays even and Pocho guesses Javier’s always been good at that; at reading people, knowing what to do if he wants to lure them in. Perhaps Javier makes him think that he wants this. Perhaps he does want this and has lost the ability to tell. He doesn’t think about it anymore, thought long lost and gone, not of importance, entirely superfluous in its existence, because Pocho kisses back, tastes and breathes in and doesn’t give a fuck until there is a quiet sound behind them that catches his attention, making him pull away reluctantly.

 

Kun is standing on the terrace, mouth agape, and eyes wide as saucepans, frozen to the spot. The door leading into the living room is standing open behind him, laughter and shouts echoing towards the across the lawn. Pocho catches his eyes, black drops of ink in the night, yet it is Javier who finds his voice first.

 

“Kun? Is everything alright?”

 

Kun visibly jerks out of his trance, blinks rapidly a dozen times and perhaps he is blushing, but it’s too dark to tell. “I just,” he starts, stuttering and stumbling over his own tongue. “Diego kind of – passed out. Esteban said to tell you, so… I mean I didn’t mean to… sorry that I –”

 

“It’s fine,” Javier says mildly, gets up as quietly as he’d sat down. “I’ll go find them,” and he briefly turns around again. “Don’t stay out too long. It’s getting cold.”

 

Pocho rolls his eyes and flips him off, doesn’t watch him disappear inside, doesn’t have a clue that Kun doesn’t follow him so he just barely keeps himself from flinching when Kun suddenly flops down next to him, apparently without sense for privacy. He takes another cigarette out of the packet, holds one out to the other.

 

“Oh, I don’t smoke,” Kun says, but Pocho doesn’t lower his arm, simply looking, watching Kun’s eyes drop to his hand until he gives in and hesitantly puts it between his lips. Pocho lights him up, gaze lingering on his lips. Kun coughs as he takes the first drags. “I… I didn’t know you and Javier were – an item.”

 

Pocho turns his head, watching the smoke dance towards the sky in front of him. “We’re not.”

 

“But,” Kun starts, is interrupted by yet another cough. Pocho makes a point of inhaling deeply, blowing out through his nose. “You were, I mean…” and he trails off.

 

“So? Doesn’t mean we’re an _item.”_

 

A few beats pass before Kun speaks up again. “Don’t you feel, I don’t know. Guilty? Because – because of Paula?”

 

Kun’s inquisitive tone makes him crane his neck again. It’s almost funny to see that Kun is squirming because of inadequate curiosity, because he thinks he’s uncovered something that probably doesn’t fit into this perfect little picture he’d painted of Javier.

 

“You think she doesn’t know?” Pocho huffs a laughs, flicks some ash onto the grass and claps a hand to Kun’s back as he’s once again struggling to breathe, most likely for more than one reason. “Try open your eyes once in while, all right?” he says and stands. “I wouldn’t want you to dent that pretty head of yours.”

 

Then he turns and goes back inside.

 

 

 

***

 

 

Pocho becomes an addict when he’s no older than twelve. It starts innocently enough; sleeping pills each night to put him into a comatose state for six hours, rest without dreams of dead corridors and drowning in blood. Anti-depressants follow, some enhancers and other colourfully called things, because some so-called doctors and therapists drop words like _bipolar_ and _borderline_ and _antisocial_ and _posttraumatic._ It becomes normal for him to eat pills like others drink water. People who don’t care think they know what to do with him, think they know what he is supposed to do and Pocho soon finds himself slipping, soon realises (because he might be emotionally crippled but he’s no fool) that everything he is expected to live up to – his mother’s heritage, his father’s legacy – is eventually going to crush him.

 

So one night, when he is lying on his bed, wide-awake, staring at his painted ceiling, he decides to become the opposite.

 

 

***

 

 

He starts running into Kun. Fucking everywhere. He just shows up wherever Pocho finds himself drifting, when he’s out with the guys or alone. Sometimes Kun tags along with Zaba and Fernando, most of the time he’s with Higuaín and Garay. Pocho doesn’t know those two very well if he’s honest, but he fears he might get to know all of them far too well in the future. Hence suddenly, their numbers grow and Pocho becomes unnerved by the constant chatter, the steady flow of bodies pushing around him until he thinks he can’t breathe, until he needs a smoke, a spliff, a line.

 

It becomes unbearable for him on occasion, that he feels the need to claw out of his own skin or slam his head against concrete until his skull splits. He leaves, to his own place where he locks himself into one of the rooms, staring at white canvases and pots overflowing with paint, or he heads further downtown, goes where people don’t know him and don’t care who he is and he takes home a guy or a girl or both to bridge the rest of the night.

 

It’s different on this night though, about a month after his birthday. They’re somewhere in Palermo, some small club he knows but not too well because it’s hardly worth knowing at all. Pocho exists the restroom, wipes his nose and drowns in colours and sharp noises, angular faces, before he singles out a familiar one not too far from him in a corner, leaning against a lopsided table that is damp with liquor, glasses and bottles half-empty and half-full and dripping onto the dirty ground. Absentmindedly, Pocho registers Nicolàs and Diego on the edge of his field of vision, grinding against a dark-haired girl in an almost obscene fashion, hands dragging across tanned and sweaty skin. He grabs onto the table and reaches for a glass, tosses its remaining content down his throat and feels it burn. Eyes, dark like buttons, soaking him up, following the curve of his neck and down to where his shirts is sticking to his chest.

 

“Where’d you leave your sidekicks?”

 

Kun blinks. His eyes are veiled by the amount of alcohol he’s undoubtedly been fed; he knows Diego. It takes a moment for him to catch on. “Eze and Pipita? I, um – not sure? Things’ve been – awkward.”

 

“Hm,” Pocho hums and lets his eyes drift about.

 

“Aren’t you going to ask me why?”

 

He tilts his head back just enough to be able to make out the blurred outlines of Kun’s form. “If you want to tell me, you don’t need me to ask.” He guesses Kun shrugs, but movements could be coming from anywhere and he doesn’t particularly pay attention to anything but the lights flickering around and the heavy bass drumming deep in his chest.

 

“We fooled around,” Kun cracks faster than Pocho expects. “Pipita and I.”

 

“Did you fuck him?” Even in the changing colours, Pocho can tell that Kun goes bright red. “Or did he fuck _you_?”

 

There is a bottle of gin sitting on the table between them. Pocho reaches for it, unscrews the top, and finds Kun’s eyes glued to his lips as he takes a large sip. A drop slips out of the corner of his mouth, trickles down to his chin, curls around his jaw and Pocho flicks it away with a swipe of his thumb.

 

“I,” Kun starts, voice hoarse and his throat is working as he swallows thickly. “He, I mean, we – well. It wasn’t anything, but… I know he likes Eze and it’s just a little,” and he trails off, glances down to his sneakers and runs a hand through his hair. It strikes Pocho right then, that Kun is still more a kid than anything else; that he shouldn’t even _be_ here at all. Yet – Pocho isn’t his babysitter. Kun is old enough. “I didn’t think it’d screw things up.”

 

“Well,” Pocho shrugs, “you can’t change it. So why care?” Kun looks at him with wide eyes and for some reason, Pocho knows that this is it; that he’s got two options here, one choice to make, with Kun entirely at his mercy. There are people who would do the right thing in this situation, people who’d tell Kun to forget all about this and go home. But Pocho is not one of them. “Why not have some fun instead?” and he draws a pea-sized, orange pill out of his pocket, drops it into a glass, and pours some gin on top of it to make it slowly dissolve.

 

It stands between them on the table; a silent offer, a quiet dare. Pocho has made his choice; he wonders what Kun’s is going to be.

 

 

 

 

Kun’s eyes are wide and Pocho thinks he can see everything in them; everything he never knew, never was, and never thought. An accumulation of things Kun believes to be true. That this is just innocent fun. That people only wish him well. That life is _fair_.

Perhaps Pocho should just let Kun have this.

 

Yet somehow, suddenly all he wants to do is prove Kun wrong.

 

 

 

***

 

 

“I’m Javier,” he says and his smile is blinding. It’s the brightest thing Pocho has seen for years.

 

He is thirteen, and he is a fool.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Please stop batting your lashes at me. This is not a date.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For dreamofthem and the_wild_son, who were always rooting for these two and requested their history to be told. Set in the same 'verse as "By the Rio de la Plata", but stands entirely on it own. Feedback is much loved.
> 
> Warnings: Recreational Drug and Alcohol abuse
> 
> A/N: This chapter was hard work. The character are running away from me. I don't blame them.

 

 

  
_“That's the thing about pain... it demands to be felt.”_

**John Green, _The Fault in Our Stars_**   


 

***

 

When Pocho pauses, when he stills his thoughts and allows them to slip and wander off far enough, he hears the trickling sound of lukewarm water. He hears each drop, crystal clear, hitting the tiles so steadily that he sometimes wonders if there is someone setting the rhythm; someone who makes the water rise to just the right level. A quiet, raspy breath that eventually quietens entirely and is never to be heard again. A final thrash, limbs in spasm, a wave of scarlet sloshing over the edges until there is utter silence, so deafening that he wants to press his hands against his ears and press down, because the void inside of him echoes on, piercing through his subconscious.

 

He can still see the exact colouring of the tiles, polished to perfection. The dark, jacquard wallpapers, the antique mirrors and light reflecting off golden taps, a single ray of sun sneaking into the room through the small gap between heavy satin drapes, hitting everything in just the right angle, and it sparkles. The ornamental feet, the gentle, white curve of the ceramic tub.

 

He can still feel the humid air brushing his bare arms, the unnaturally warm ground beneath his feet, the solid presence of the wall behind his back, the dampness clogging his nostrils and throat. And he can still smell that sickening sweetness, mixed with scented candles, the sharpness of alcohol and the bitter, metallic stench of blood.

 

Teeth bite at his neck and pull him back, out of his trance, skin soothed over by a hot tongue and a moment later, breath ghosts over Pocho’s lips and he raises his hand between them. The face above him is smudged, the corners of his vision blackened as if a veil had been draped around them, and it is not familiar. Pocho knows that he’ll have forgotten it as soon as he turns his head again. His fingers press against plush lips.

 

“Don’t get sappy.” His tongue feels foreign in his mouth, heavy and coated. “Put that mouth to better use,” Pocho says, digging his hands into muscular shoulders, pushing, “and suck my cock.”

 

He does, doing a fairly decent job and the resulting wave of pleasure empties his mind long enough to blissfully drift on the after-effects, spliff between his lips and inhaling deeply. Hands are still roaming his skin, but Pocho feels relaxed enough to refrain from telling the guy to piss off already; he’ll get the picture soon enough. He watches the smoke rise towards his ceiling, pristine white and it feels wrong, keeps shivering, like chicken skin on concrete. Outside the panorama windows, the sun might be rising or setting, throwing shadows that crawl all over Pocho’s skin and into his pores and he untangles himself impatiently, stumbles across the floor, almost falls over clothes they had discarded earlier.

 

Pocho slams the door to his bathroom shut behind him, walks to the sink and starts rummaging through one of the cabinets next to it. Soon his trembling fingers close around an accustomed bottle and he yanks at the lid with impatience, empties its entire contents into his hand and counts. There are far too many, but they melt into one pulp in front of his strained eyes. He swallows them all down with water from the tap, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. For a second or two, he fears he might throw them back up again, stomach stirring and tasting bile, but by now, his body is used to him filling it up to keep it from rebelling.

 

By the time he re-enters his bedroom, he is alone again, so he picks up a pair of shorts to put on before he wanders out into the hallway that seems to stretch on endlessly today. The walls are bare, like in every other room in his apartment except the one he’s now heading to. He shuts the door, turns the lock, and breathes in smells that he started knowing when he could barely walk; lacquer and paint, bleach and cotton canvas. A handful are leaning against the wall splashed with colour, one canvas, taking up half of the floor, is still rolled out in front of him, not yet mounted onto a wooden frame and Pocho assumes it never will be, because it will never be finished.

 

Pocho grabs a brush and sits down, dips it into a bucket of colour swirls and watches them spin. He stills and listens to the trickles of water, feels hot air clouding his head, and when he drags the brush across the canvas, he sees marble tiles splattered with scarlet.

 

 

 

 

Martín drops by a few hours later when Pocho has firmly locked the door again and his entire torso and arms are covered in dried, red paint. Grinning lopsidedly, Martín just follows him quietly out onto the terrace. It’s warm and the sky is clear, such a rich, deep indigo blue that could never be reproduced by man. Buenos Aires is glistening beneath them, a cheerful reflection of the dark and distorted city they know it is at night. Martín rolls them two joints, tobacco, weed and some white chunks Pocho thinks might be mescaline, not that it matters.

 

“You know,” Martín speaks up after a while of companionable silence that Pocho was quite enjoying. “Sometimes you’re really fucking creepy.”

 

Pocho lifts a lazy brow. “It’s just paint.”

 

“Not talking about the fact that you look like you’ve just caused a homicide,” he says, not moving anything but his lips and even those only barely, making his words barely comprehensible to Pocho’s ears. “Remember the first time Diego took MDMA? He was just off the rockers, made no fucking sense. Don’t get me started on Zaba and Gabi. Even Javier gets weird.” He pauses heavily and lets his read roll to the side so he can look him in the eyes. “I can never tell with you. And it’s creepy. Do you even, like – feel anything?”

 

Pocho shrugs, doesn’t answer; doesn’t say that he can’t tell because Pocho is always high, always on something. That without it, he would have lost his mind long ago.

 

That he sees that bloody tub whenever he closes his eyes and wishes he’d have drowned in it right alongside her.

 

 

 

***

 

 

His father starts withering away when Pocho is eleven, and he watches him like he’d watch a tree that loses its leaves before winter – with utter indifference. By the end of it, when poisonous cells have eaten away his insides until he is nothing but an empty, lifeless shell, Pocho is pushed to his bedside and he stares down at the man he is supposed to care for and who has never cared for him, looks upon him as last, desperate tears rolls out of sunken eyes. And somehow, Pocho feels a sudden rush of malicious joy as his own eyes stay as dry as the sterile hospital walls.

 

 

***

 

 

She is wearing red lipstick. It is meticulously precisely applied to her mouth and an obscene contrast to her parchment-like that drapes in wrinkles around her angular jaw. Her white hair is short and thin, her brows practically non-existent and thus drawn on with a pencil. Earlobes are weighed down and stretched by two rubies as big as eggs, matching the lipstick, matching the claws absentmindedly stroking the mahogany surface of her desk. The sound is quiet and yet somehow so disturbing that he fights the urge to cover his ears.

 

“It is quite a shame, my dear,” she says with a voice that is stronger than one would first guess, looking at him with eyes that hold unusual focus considering her age and frail appearance. “Quite a shame,” and it feels like the hundredth time those words leave her lips.

 

There is a cup of steaming tea between them on the table, herbal and smelling vile, surrounded by envelopes and opened letters, pens and paperclips. His eyes drift past her shoulder to a painting by Schiele; the portrait of a woman, almost beautiful in her grotesqueness, body exposed, hair an angry array of haphazard lines.

 

“Really, dear, it is a shame,” she repeats like a mantra. “I have had quite an impressive amount of requests. I hope you are aware of that.”

 

“Perfectly,” he replies, refusing to take his eyes off the canvas behind her.

 

She shakes her head. Light catches on the rubies dangling from her ears. “Saying no to a Guggenheim exhibition. To a commission by the Rothschilds. I don’t know why I bother with you.”

 

“Why do you?” Pocho asks, too tired of this conversation to snap at her.

 

“Because, my dear, there are connoisseurs and collectors around the world dying to see more of you. And it would be a _shame_ ,” she stresses once more, “if you wasted your talent and became one of them.”

 

“What if I said I don’t paint anymore?”

 

“Ezequiel,” and she is the only person who still calls him that, “I know I am an old hag, but don’t think you can lie to me. You mightn’t want anyone to know, but you will always paint. And I shall not question and prod, only remind you that those air-headed fools would pay as much for one of your pieces as they would for Richter’s abstracts.”

 

“Money doesn’t concern me,” Pocho mutters, lowering his eyes to a thread that’s come loose on his shirt. He starts to pull on it, and it breaks.

 

“Oh, I am quite aware of that. I am only providing you with a different perspective.” She lets out a raspy sigh, takes the cup of tea with her skeletal hands and brings it to her brightly coloured lips. “Now. Tell me about that Picasso.”

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

He doesn’t like coming to _Crobar,_ especially when it’s a Saturday night and it seems like every person in Buenos Aires has crammed into the club, making the air thick and full of unpleasant smells. His head has been throbbing for hours already and he feels ill, knows that all he needs is to sleep, finally sleep after days spent wandering the streets at night and drifting between various levels of consciousness, never fully aware of himself. Yet he lifts his glass to his lips again, chucks the sharp content down his throat without second thought, despite having lost count entirely.

 

There are a few familiar faces in the crowd; Diego, of course, not far away from his brother and he thinks he can see Gabriel and Martín somewhere on the first floor, leaning against the railings and gazing down. Right ahead, not too far (farther and he wouldn’t have recognised them), are Higuaín and Garay, grinding against a busty brunette in barely-there shorts. They’re raking their hands over her tanned and sparkling form, but it is such a pathetic display that Pocho nearly snorts into his drink. When, only a few moments later, someone steps up next to where he is leaning against the wet surface of the bar, elbows bumping and brushing, he somehow instantly knows who it is.

 

He gives Kun a nudge, nods ahead and empties his drink. “How long until she realises that they want to fuck each other and not her?”

 

Kun chuckles quietly and when he answers, his words are heavy and slurred. “Another five minutes? I mean, they’ve been at it for a while, haven’t they. Pipita’s probably about to explode.”

 

“Speaking from experience?” he asks, still not averting his eyes. The girl is latching onto Garay’s strong jaw and her teeth are pearly white when they show, but Garay barely acknowledges her anymore, gaze firmly locked with Higuaín and he reaches around her to stroke a hand up his arm.

 

“We only did it once,” Kun answers without hesitation, without any embarrassment and Pocho assumes that he’s had his fair share of alcohol and whatnot already, and isn’t that curious. All it takes is a small push, a resulting tumble, and people don’t seem able to catch themselves from falling. “Pipita bought pot from the docks and I found the key for my father’s liquor cabinet. We were just –”

 

Pocho does eventually turn his head to look at Kun when he breaks off. His skin is glistening and changing colour beneath the rainbow lights flashing above them. “High?”

 

Kun shrugs, bites his lip and Pocho feels his eyes drawn to the flick of tongue soothing over worried skin. “Curious, I guess,” Kun says then. “It was – good, I think. Can’t remember much.”

 

“What a pity,” Pocho can’t help but comment dryly and lets his glance drift just in time to see the girl grab a handful of Higuaín’s crotch.

 

“Wouldn’t – wouldn’t you fuck him if he offered?”

 

“No,” he replies flatly, and it’s the truth.

 

“Why? You fuck Javier.”

 

With that, Kun has regained his undivided attention. The glass beneath his fingertips is still cold and he sets it down onto the counter with a clank, stares at Kun because this feels different all of a sudden, different from the wide-eyed, stuttering boy from his birthday who’d fallen all over himself, who’d seemed too young and too much out of place and unable to fit in. And now he slots right in like a well-oiled joint. Doesn’t even blush in spite of probably never having had a cock up his arse.

No, Kun looks oddly calm, although Pocho can see the slight tremor is his hands, the speed of his pulse. He is leaning back on his elbows, clothes clinging to his muscular frame and diamonds sparkling in his ears. There is a curve to his neck, to his lips and he keeps fucking licking them like he’s trying to –

 

He doesn’t know why, but it takes a moment for him to find his voice. “Javier fucks me, just so you know,” and at least Kun is twitching with that bit of information he was definitely not expecting. “And please don’t tell me this is you trying to come onto me.”

 

Kun flashes him a lopsided smile, face flushed, but perhaps it’s just the coloured bulbs above. “Not doing very well, am I?”

 

“Do you really want me to answer that?”

 

“Probably not,” Kun replies, smiling bashfully and Pocho gestures for another drink, feels eyes glued to him and he has half a mind to be annoyed about it, yet decides quickly that he doesn’t care if Kun feels the need to stare. “You know,” Kun continues, “I don’t really get you and Javier.”

 

Pocho shrugs, runs the tips of his fingers over the bar’s surface, senses heightened and cold dampness prickling against his skin. “Nobody does,” he shrugs and leaves it unsaid that he doesn’t get it either, never has, but he’s stopped worrying about it long ago. “So?”

 

Kun’s eyes flicker to his shoes for a split second and they don’t meet his after; they stay glued to the crook of his neck, where his collarbone meets the tendons of his neck, where a few black lines are creeping out from underneath his t-shirt. “I just – you said you wouldn’t fuck Pipita. And yet you and Javier are… doing whatever you’re doing.”

 

“Your point being?”

 

Kun is still not meeting Pocho’s gaze, still focused on a spot on his neck that only he can see and perhaps Pocho is imagining it, but the distance between them grows smaller, the air even warmer and heavy with tension. “I’m just wondering,” Kun says and drops his voice, barely audible now over the music blasting from every angle, “if you would fuck me?” Says it without as much as batting an eyelash. Blushing, yes, but there is no hesitation evident and the soft tremble in Kun’s form doesn’t stem from anything but –

 

Pocho brings his drink to his lips, suddenly grateful for an excuse to twist his body away from Kun, even if only slightly. He takes long sips and the alcohol burns on its way down, but Pocho collects his thoughts, manages to hold on to his composure that somehow started slipping thanks to Kun being shamefully blunt.

 

“You suck at flirting, so you take the direct approach, huh?”

 

“Worth a shot,” and he is still smiling, still holding on to this crush he has on Pocho for whatever reason. “Would you?” Kun presses on, and Pocho shakes his head with huffed laughter.

 

“No,” he says, keeping his tone as flat as possible. “No, I wouldn’t.”

 

“Why?”

 

In less than a second, Pocho comes up with a hundred reasons and he wants to tell Kun every single one, but he doesn’t. Instead he stays quiet for a moment and thinks, _because you are seventeen, you are barely a grown-up, you are so lost_ and _somehow you think this is what you want._ He can’t stop the sigh that escapes his lips and when he faces Kun again, his expression is as blank as he can keep it.

 

“Because I don’t think you can do this without getting attached.”

 

Kun doesn’t smile anymore. His face goes as blank as Pocho’s and Pocho can see his throat working as he swallows and there is something hanging between them like a curtain, woven with unexpressed thoughts and unsaid words and he knows they both realise exactly what those are, can practically hear Kun’s voice in his head asking, _what if I already am?_

Pocho clutches to his drink, empty already, as Kun struggles to smile again. It appears like an effort but Kun manages nonetheless and he gets the creeping feeling that it’s a regular practice, that this is Kun’s defence mechanism, one that is often applied and repeated.

 

“Can I still buy you a drink?”

 

He can’t but feel a twitch around the corners of his own mouth. “You can buy me breakfast.”

 

Kun blinks at him. “Breakfast?”

 

“I told you, keep your eyes open. It’s already seven in the morning.”

 

 

 

Outside, the sun is already climbing up steadily, shedding light all over the city so that Pocho has to squint when he steps out onto the street and waves for a cab. Kun is a warm, solid presence next to him, quiet now that they’re heading towards La Boca, but his eyes keep burning into his skin, following the lines of his shoulders, the flexing muscle in his arms. Pocho leads him to a shabby, old café that is empty except for an old man sitting out the front with some mate, a cigar between his lips, and a newspaper open on his knees. He is dressed in a tweed suit, three-piece, complete with bowtie and fedora, seemingly still at home in a time where this was normal morning attire and where the chair to his left, slightly angled, was still occupied by a woman in an elegant summer dress.

 

Pocho pushes the door open, awakening the rusty bell that is sitting on top on the wooden frame. He chooses a booth towards the back, in a corner the sun doesn’t reach, and the leather groans when he sits down.

 

“I’ve never been here before,” Kun says as he sits down opposite him.

 

“Thought so.”

 

“D’you come here often?”

 

“Occasionally,” Pocho shrugs.

 

The owner, the only person present at this time of day, comes over wearing a striped apron covered in flour and he smiles with crooked teeth, two of them missing. He is carrying a plate with pastries, freshly made; another perk of being early. Pocho orders coffee while Kun opts for mate and when the owner sets the two steaming cups down in front of them just a minute later, Kun quirks an eyebrow at him.

 

“No mate?”

 

Pocho shakes his head. “I don’t like it.”

 

It seems easier for Kun to smile now and he appears more like himself (if Pocho can even be a judge of that), although his pupils are still blown. “I didn’t think there was a single Argentine who doesn’t like mate.”

 

“I wasn’t born here,” Pocho tells him and Kun frowns for a moment.

 

“Really? I thought so. You went to our school.”

 

“I was born in Italy,” he explains briefly. “Grew up in France. And I don’t like mate.” He takes his coffee cup between his hands to emphasise his point, breathes in the rising aroma of grounded beans and relishes the warmth pressing against his palms.

 

“You sure?” Kun asks. “This one’s pretty good.”

 

“No, thanks. And please stop batting your lashes at me. This is not a date.”

 

 

***

 

 

He doesn’t sleep that night, which takes the tally up to a week, he thinks, but he isn’t sure because there is a piercing pain in his head that almost blinds him momentarily, makes all his insides knot up and convulse until he has to empty his stomach into the toilet, coughing up everything he’s put in his belly in the past few days it seems (which is less than he’d assumed, thank God). He slumps back against the tiled wall, cold sweat pooling in the hollow of his throat as Pocho struggles to keep his breath even. It would be blissful to just pass out right this moment, let exhaustion and his body get the upper hand, but there is still something stuck inside his chest, something that he can’t get out no matter how many times he throws. It itches and pokes at his subconscious, a million ants crawling beneath his skin and threatening to break through.

 

Pocho blindly reaches for a cabinet drawer, yanks it open and pulls it out so that it hits the floor with a noise that thunders on between the polished walls. He rummages through it, fishes out whatever packet his fingers close around first and swallows one pill after the other, dry, only stops when he almost gags. It might be hours until the pain subsides and he drags himself off the ground, it might be a few minutes. He takes his phone that’s still lying on his bedside table and blinking with missed calls and unread messages, but Pocho ignores all of them, only sends Martín a quick text to drop the usual into his mailbox first thing in the morning – because as it turns out, it is still night time, dark and cool outside when he pulls up outside the empty gallery.

 

He unlocks the back door, doesn’t bother switching on the light and heads straight for the cellar, for one specific storage room he’s visited far too often in the past month. It’s an addiction, worse than all the other ones he is perfectly aware of, simply because it doesn’t make anything better for him, because he feels fucking haunted because of it and he can’t – he just can’t stop. There are a handful of security codes he has to type in and it should be frightening that he knows all of them by heart, doesn’t even have to be in a clear state of mind to remember them (but when is he ever). The locks hiss when they slide open and he finally steps inside.

 

The halogen lamps on the ceiling are shining yellow, unnatural, special lights to prevent any harm on the painting that has calmly and quietly taken up residence on the wall, inside his head, inside his bloody heart, it seems. Pocho knows he should sell it; display it for a couple of months perhaps, lend it to a handful of museums and galleries and then auction it off for double the price that he’d paid for it. But at the same time, he is absolutely unable to consider it.  He can’t part from it, so he lowers his aching body onto the concrete, sits down in the middle of the room and looks at it until his phone buzzes inside his pocket in the early hours of the morning.

 

 

 

 

“He’s not home,” Paula says as she opens the door for him, blond hair spilling generously over her shoulders. She’s wearing a striped jumper, a pair of washed jeans; miles away from the dolled up girls that rub against him every night. It’s always been something he’s liked about her – a natural ease. She has grown into her own skin, into her own self, like none of them really have.

 

“Good,” Pocho says and steps past her and into the hallway, walks straight ahead into the kitchen and falls onto a chair at the island, rubs his face, feels his eyes burn. Footsteps tell him that Paula follows him calmly.

 

“You’re looking rough,” she tells him flatly and sets a cup of coffee down in front of him.

 

“Thanks. I guess rough is a diplomatic word choice?”

 

“Oh, definitely,” she smiles and tilts her head. Her hair falls to the side like a curtain. “Rough is all you’re getting from me today,” Paula adds with a wink. “Rough and tough love.”

 

“Should’ve stayed at home then.”

 

“Perhaps.”

 

They sit and drink their coffee in silence, with Paula’s eyes on him and Pocho’s eyes aimlessly wandering about; to the pile of letters collected and sitting in a neat pile at the edge of the kitchen island, the bouquet of flowers arranged in a priceless Ming vase on a small table in the corner, the potted herbs on the window sill – to the stack of wedding brochures.

 

“So he asked you?” spills from his lips before he can stop himself, glances up to meet her lingering gaze.

 

“It’s something we talk about. Occasionally,” Paula answers without a fuss, without giving him a hint of what exactly it is they talk about, of how she really feels about it.

 

“Was the word _yes_ involved?”

 

He can’t tell if he feels surprised when she shakes her head. “It wasn’t. Not yet, at least.”

 

“Why?”

 

Her smile softens, but her eyes are unwavering. “Because I don’t think he’s ready to let go of you just yet.”

 

Pocho can’t tell if he feels guilty about that either. It’s almost like a bitter aftertaste he guesses; eating something wonderfully sweet only to find it turns unbecoming on the way down your throat. “Sorry,” he tells her, because it seems like the appropriate thing to say.

 

“Don’t be,” Paula replies quickly, waving him off with a flick of her delicate wrist, making his eyes catch on a thin, golden bracelet that is wound tightly around her skin. “After all, you were there before me.” She says it like she says all, without a fuss and without an ounce of disdain towards him, which would be entirely justified, simply because she doesn’t have a single bad bone in her body. It still startles him now what a good person she is, how she handles everything with the utmost grace. He always tells Javier that Paula is too good for him. The truth is that she is far too good for all of them.

 

She is right, because Pocho was there first (which is not an excuse at all, he knows, he should get out of this but he can’t); was a practically mute nutcase with a thousand-yard gaze until Javier had stepped up, making it impossible to look around him. He’d been breathtaking even as a teenager, laws of nature not applying to him, allowing Javier to remain striking and composed instead of awkward and fumbling. Javier had stepped into Pocho’s line of vision and refused to step out of it, for whatever reason, Pocho still doesn’t know, isn’t sure that Javier does. Now he is perfectly aware that it was mindless infatuation; an unknown form of desire and a sudden burst of light, of colours and _life_ so unlike anything he’d experienced up to this point. A new kind of rush pulling him out of this numbing solitude that’d been his life. He knows that now. Still, it had felt like love at the time.

 

Paula had appeared much later, when the naivety of youth had already worn off. She had appeared in Pocho’s life, actually, which is ironic, he thinks. Part of his art class at University and granddaughter to their faculty’s matron, an associate and confidante of the late Peggy Guggenheim. Pocho didn’t fall for her like he did for Javier, but she had forced her way into his life in a very similar fashion and once he’d introduced them, he knew how it was going to be.

 

Pocho looks at her now, only a few years older and yet wise and patient beyond, subtly beautiful and wearing her good heart on her sleeve. And there is no ring on her finger, no wedding in the near future because her boyfriend and he have developed a twisted co-dependency they can’t get out of.

 

He sighs heavily and empties his coffee. “You mentioned giving me tough love. Was that it or am I a fool for assuming that?”

 

“You’re not a fool, Pocho,” she says fondly, reaching out to put a hand onto his forearm. “And there is something I wanted to talk to you about. I ran into a friend yesterday. A girl I used to tutor in school.”

 

“Please tell me you’re not trying to set me up.”

 

Paula tilts her head and squints. “I don’t think so, but I am not so sure about that yet,” she says, which makes him furrow his brows. “Anyway. Her name is Giannina. She’s Kun’s girlfriend. Or rather, ex-girlfriend.”

 

Pocho just refrains from burying his face in his hands. He groans inwardly. “Not you too,” he mutters and digs for his cigarettes, hoping that Paula won’t reprimand him for smoking inside. She doesn’t, just walks around the kitchen island to open a window and sets an ashtray down in front of him, because she really is too good for all of them. “Thanks.”

 

She settles down again. “Right. I ran into her, we decided to go for a drink, did some talking and it came up that he broke up with her. Recently.”

 

“How’s she taking it?”

 

“In stride,” Paula smiles. “She’s a tough girl and I guess she saw it coming.” She pauses, as if she is waiting for him to contribute anything to this exchange of information, but Pocho doesn’t know who Giannina is (he _does_ know, theoretically; knows that her father used to be in politics before sabotaging his own career with a heap of scandals) and he has no clue about her and Kun’s pseudo-romance. “I must confess,” Paula eventually continues, “that I am not surprised either. I mean, he’s been around a lot.”

 

Pocho forces a smirk. “Did he let his eyes wander too much? You don’t mind _me_ staring at your man’s ass.”

 

She laughs at that, softly, and shakes her head to herself. “I don’t. But he doesn’t stare at Javier.” He gives her a look. “Okay, fine, not more than everyone else. That is not what I mean though.” Again, she stills and Pocho feels that he is not going to like whatever is following her silence. “He talks about you. Of you. All the time. Has been for ages, trying to milk Javier for information. And you know what Giannina told me? Apparently, Kun told her that he was in _love_ with someone else.”

 

Now, Pocho does groan and bury his face in his hands. He rubs them over his strained eyes and stubbled cheeks and takes a long drag of his cigarette. “I haven’t touched him.”

 

“I know. Do you want to?”

 

“Is that you asking? Or Javier?”

 

“Javier has nothing to do with this,” she says. “This is me, asking you: Do you want to?” Paula punctuates each word but she is so gentle about it that he doesn’t feel like he’s been put under a microscope. His head is pounding.

 

“I shouldn’t,” and he doesn’t have to add that he sees Kun in front of him, drenched in rainbow colours and eyes like coal, asking Pocho – his brain cuts off there, because with Paula opposite him, looking at him, he feels too exposed, feels like she is already looking through him as if he were an average panel of glass. He doesn’t give her any excuses, because he is not ready for her to pick them apart and scrutinise his thoughts; doesn’t say _Kun is still seventeen_ , because she’d reply that he wouldn’t be in a few days or _Kun doesn’t know what he wants,_ because she’d tell him he’s never known that either or _Kun is in love with me_ , because she’d say that Javier was in love with him once, too.

“Doesn’t matter anyway. He’s probably going through a phase. It’ll pass.”

 

“You sure about that?”

 

Pocho raises his brows at her, reaches for another cigarette, ignoring her disapproving look. “What? Don’t tell me you’ve never had a bad boy phase.”

 

He expects her to laugh at that, tell him that she’s always had a thing for James Dean and Al Pacino (because he knows she does), but Paula looks at him with a serious expression, a slight tilt to her brow, resulting in a thin and barely visibly line on her forehead. “Is that what you are?” she asks him. “A _bad_ person? Because you’re not, Pocho. You’re not, all right?”

 

He feels exhausted; it his him like a brick to his head and pain explodes between his temples. He knows that there are a couple of packets waiting for him once he gets back to his place and there is still some weed left in his pocket, but he wouldn’t dare in Paula’s presence, despite being almost certain that she knows anyway. Pocho isn’t good at hiding things from her. “If I’m not a bad person,” he says, “then what am I?”

 

Their eyes meet across the island, his gaze questioning, hers suddenly incredibly sad and he knows that they’re thinking the exact same thing.

 

He is broken.

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

Pocho doesn’t sleep. He thanks Martín and fills his body until it thinks it’s absolutely fine, then he heads out, meets up with Gabriel and Zaba and together they go downtown. Along the way, Diego joins them and they enter one club after the other until the sky is grey and the sun only an hour away from rising. It’s when he stumbles over Zaba and Higuaín, who looks awkward without Garay plastered to his side, and eventually, his eyes find Kun, slouched into a booth with Garay next to him. Pocho crosses the room in a heartbeat and without second thought, pushes through the crowd and Kun’s eyes flick up to meet his when he’s only a yard away.

 

“Go find your boyfriend,” he tells Garay and points over his shoulder. “I need to talk to Kun.”

 

Garay wiggles his eyebrows at Kun, who flips him off half-heartedly and Pocho can’t be asked to feel irritated by what’s insinuated here. He slides into the booth opposite Kun and folds his arms on the table. “So,” he says straight away, cutting to the chase. He’s never blown anyone off in an obvious manner, not anyone that he actually knows, so he thinks quick and painless is the way to go. “Apparently, you’re in love with me.”

 

Kun’s eyes go wide and he looks so much like a deer in the headlight that Pocho is led to believe it’s not going to be as painless as he’d hoped. “Where did you hear that?”

 

“Doesn’t matter,” Pocho replies. “Are you?”

 

Kun looks very much caught outside his comfort zone, but then his features unfreeze and he ends up shrugging, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards. “Maybe,” he says. “Why?”

 

“You need to get over it. And don’t make that face at me. You’re making a fool out of yourself,” he tells him. “Because this,” and he gestures between them, “is never going to happen.”

 

“It’s okay,” Kun says. “I don’t mind looking like an idiot from time to time. Also, did I mention that I can be very patient?”

 

Pocho shakes his head. “Jesus, you are – infuriating.”

 

Kun just shrugs. “’s what my mother tells me every day.”

 

“Still trying to move out then?” Pocho asks and is surprised at the speed with which Kun’s gotten his head out of the noose.

 

“Yeah. But it’s kind of hard when your parents still have hold of all the money. Considering they’re never around anyway, they’re having a really hard time letting go. But I’ll be eighteen the day after tomorrow. Should be easier after that.” He pauses, stares at Pocho in this blatant way, with undivided attention and eyes that are focused despite the pupils blown wide. “Hey, you should come,” Kun continues, grinning widely now. “The party’s at mine, but my parents will be gone. Should be a blast.”

 

“No, thank you,” Pocho replies, because the last thing he wants to do is face an eighteen-year-old Kun who is surrounded by people his eyes, intoxicated and what not, with everyone staring like Kun is doing right now. He gets up.

 

“Where are you going?”

 

“Out,” he tells Kun, downing one of the drinks that sit on the table. “I need air.” He looks at Kun and Kun’s not moving, so he raises his eyebrows expectantly. “Are you coming?”

 

“Oh, right,” Kun splutters and scrambles after him rather ungracefully. Pocho has to bite back a smile, because Kun really is making a fool out of himself. What’s worse is that Pocho doesn’t even mind as much as he should.

 

They step out into the relatively empty backyard. There are a couple of stacked up plastic chairs in the corner, a handful set up around a few tables, illuminated by cheap lights dangling between two lampposts. The concrete ground is filthy, littered with cigarette bugs, empty cups and shards from broken glasses, from beer bottles tossed around. Pocho shuts the door after Kun’s walked out behind him and leans back against the damp wall. The air is humid and thick with lingering warmth, steam rising up towards the sky where first rays of light touch the wet surface. There is an orange strip visible on the horizon, an array of clouds looking like they’ve been ripped to shreds. It smells vile and Pocho’s stomach lurches.

 

Kun mirrors him, leans back and watches as Pocho pulls out a small, silver case from his pocket and takes out to neatly rolled spliffs. He passes one to Kun without second thought and lights his own, soaking up the smoke that instantly fills his throat. There is no hesitancy to Kun’s movements, he notes with surprise, but perhaps it shouldn’t surprise him at all. After all, it’s a steep slope. It’s not surprising anymore how fast people can get used to things that are entirely unnatural for others.

 

“God, what is that?” he asks after a first taste, looking at Pocho with a bewildered look.

 

“Mescaline,” Pocho says and that’s that, because if Kun doesn’t want to, he doesn’t have to. But he is quick to get over the initial confusion, soon appears to be less steady on his feet yet even twitchier and eventually, he leans heavily against Pocho’s side, arms touching from wrist to shoulder. He isn’t bothered by it, so focused on the radiant colours of the sky that he wants nothing more than dip his hands into it to smear fluorescent orange and yellow across still dull grey.

 

“Why don’t you,” Kun starts eventually, stumbling over his own tongue as if he were trying to work his way around it somehow. “Like, why don’t you want to fuck me,” he slurs. “Because I really want you to, you know? A lot. I’ve been – so long, you know. Just so fucking long.”

 

He turns his head against Pocho’s shoulder and Pocho can feel the outline of his mouth against his skin; the hardness of his teeth, the softness of his lips. Pocho lets his read roll to the side, cheek scraping against the rough stone walls, bones light and heavy at the same time and Kun is just there, so close and if this is the moment to back off and get out and just fucking _stop_ , Pocho watches it slide by because he is too bloody high to give a shit anymore. “You’re an idiot,” he says without any bite to it, actually sounds fucking fond and he’d punch himself it he could lift his arms. Fortunately, he is still aware enough to say, “Still not going to fuck you.”

 

Kun’s sigh is both endearing and off-putting; because it makes him sounds exactly like the teenager he is pretending not to be. “Oh man, you’re cruel. It’s my birthday soon. Can I at least get like – a taste? A sniff of what I’m missing?”

 

And perhaps, this is where he is supposed to tell Kun to go home, and leave. But he doesn’t say anything. And he doesn’t leave. He looks at Kun for a moment; at the darkness in his eyes that are just so fucking deep he doesn’t think there is a word out there to describe it, and his silly earrings and his face that is so bright with – Pocho doesn’t know. This is the point he is supposed to do the right thing and ironically, it is also the exact second his brain gets positively clouded by vodka and mescaline and so he presses his shoulder against the wall and moves away, curls his body toward Kun until he’s got his arms braced on either side of his head. Kun licks his lips. Pocho can’t tear himself away.

 

Some part of him thinks that kisses are supposed to be drenched in affection and soft like the clouds sliding across the sky. But when his mouth crashes down over Kun’s, it is everything but. Pocho does as Kun asks (and he will worry about the why later) and kisses him; kisses him hard so that Kun can’t have a single doubt that it’s him. He throws his entire body into it, feels tension draining from his shoulder as he does, drags his fingers through Kun’s hair, over his skull, angling his head to claim his mouth entirely. Hands are helplessly trying to find a grip on his waist, tangling in his t-shirt, pulling until the fabric rubs over his skin, making his senses explode. Pocho moves away slightly, Kun’s lower lip between his teeth before soothing it over with his tongue and diving in again for one last, lingering moment in which he slides their bodies together until not an ounce of air can find space between them.

 

Then he pulls away and takes a step back. Looks at what he’s done.

 

Kun is struggling to stay on his feet, skin flushed and lips bruised. His shirt has ridden up his stomach and his belt is askew, arms hanging at his side lifelessly. Eyes wider than Pocho’s ever seen them, and darker too, already pulling him in again but he stays where he is, because if he scoots one inch closer, he knows he is not going to stop until he’s got Kun pressed against the wall face first, slamming into him until he begs and screams. With trembling fingers, he tucks a cigarette between his lips to stop himself, takes a few long drags before he finds the strength to turn around.

 

He walks away.

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pocho stops talking when he’s eight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Recreational drug and alcohol abuse. 
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I own nothing and nobody. Sadly.
> 
> A/N: Not very happy with this. Meh. Enjoy nonetheless.

 

 

_You realize that trying to keep your distance from me will not lessen my affection for you. All efforts to save me from you will fail._   
**―** **John Green, _The Fault in Our Stars_**

 

 

 

***

 

 

Pocho stops talking when he’s eight, just after his mother dies. Perhaps even before then, he can’t remember. At first it’s because he fears that every time he opens his mouth, a scream will slip out and he doesn’t want anybody to think he is actually suffering because a woman he barely knew is gone. He learns Spanish rather quickly when he starts to live with his father (he says live with, but maybe it would be better described with _live alongside him_ ) and so that is no reason for him to keep quiet; yet he finds that suddenly, he doesn’t have anything left to say, and that doesn’t change, at first. His father lets him be dragged from one specialist to the next and eventually, he is so fed up with Pocho’s refusal to even utter a single syllable that he hits him across the face with the back of his hand. After that, Pocho stays silent out of defiance.

 

When his father is dead, there is no need to keep up the pretence anymore, but somehow, Pocho can’t part his lips. He tries, but he has substituted words by a million different things and finds that he’s lost sight of them entirely. One day, out of the blue, Javier sits down in front of him and changes that; talks to him for whatever reason, never expecting an answer to his questions. Eventually, Javier coaxes Pocho’s lips apart, first with his voice, then some time later with his tongue and Pocho finds himself getting pulled into a reality that is the most normal one he’s ever known. At one point, Diego says, “You’re weird”, but Javier tells him to shut up. And that’s the end of that.

 

Or rather, that should have been the end of it. It’s easy and for the first time in his life, Pocho feels something stirring inside of him that seems remotely close to feeling content (he’d never dare to call it happiness). And he considers letting go, drifting along with the current until he and the others reach the shore through mellow waters. Pocho does drift and he falls in love and out of it just as fast. He grows up quicker than he should, realising that there is no dry shore waiting for any of them – that there is nothing but water and nothing left to do but sink, stay afloat for as long as possible until time takes its toll and drags you down.

 

There are a million and more different variables to that single fact, yet there are only two choices, never more. It would be easy to just let everything run its course and obediently follow; perhaps it would even be _right_.

 

But Pocho never makes the right choice.

 

 

***

 

_“You know he’ll be expecting you to come,”_ Javier tells him over the phone some time before lunch, or perhaps after. Maybe lunchtime is already far gone and he failed to notice. It’s warm and sunny and he’s had a headache since dusk.

Pocho has closed the curtains in every room, opened the windows to let a breeze in, and he is sitting on the cold tiles of his kitchen, head leaning back against the fridge. He is thinking about its contents to keep a grasp on his conscious; there are a couple of tubs of yoghurt that his housekeeper keeps buying because she’s been going on and on about his intake of protein, some of her homemade stew, bottles of sparkling water, energy drinks, Mexican beer that’s only there because Martín left it. Pocho hasn’t counted the bottles of Vodka he’s stored in the freezer. Or the packets of weed in a drawer, hidden behind some soda cans.

_“Are you listening to me?”_

 

He had attempted to get some of that stew into his stomach earlier, but it had wandered straight into the drain after a couple of gulps. Pocho can’t remember the last time he slept, or ate anything solid, and there is a persistent itch tugging at his subconscious. He needs to get laid, desperately, clear his mind before he ends up heading to one of the windows to throw himself out of them. Running, maybe that’s an option too; tiring his body out until he can’t do anything but collapse, but he’s beyond this point and the only thing that would make Pocho pass out is a baseball bat to his temple. He thinks Esteban used to play in school.

_“If you don’t answer me right now, I’m heading over.”_

 

Pocho rubs a hand over his face. “Calm the fuck down, Javier, and for Christ’s sake, don’t yell. I’ve got a headache.”

 

“ _Well,”_ Javier says, “ _did you hear what I said?”_

 

“Yeah, I did, Kun’s birthday, he wants us all to come, but I don’t fancy the idea, so can I hang up?” He starts to push himself off the floor, but the attempt sends a bolt of pain down his spine and he slips back down with a silent groan.

 

_“You sure? He’s the last of us to turn eighteen. His parents have rented two floors at the Alvear.”_

 

“Impressive,” Pocho comments dryly, already picturing the event in his head and it’s making his stomach churn unpleasantly. He almost feels sorry for Kun, for his parents’ desperate attempt to use every opportunity to boast and brag, even at his expense. A few dozen not-yet-adults being moulded into becoming mirror images of past generations and all equally destined to fail and burn. Perhaps he is being dramatic in his way of thinking, but when it all boils down to it, he is quite precise in his observations. “And does the _Alvear_ sound like the place I’d choose to hang out at on a Friday night?”

 

_“Not particularly,”_ Javier admits. _“And I know I can’t lure you with free drinks. But listen, everyone is going to be there, and I don’t want you to exclude yourself.”_

 

“Ah, so that’s what it is. You’re worried I’m becoming a hermit.”

_“I’m worried you’re forgetting that you have friends.”_

 

Pocho bites down on his bottom lip, and suddenly he feels the coldness of the draft on his bare arms. Closing his eyes, he tries to keep with breath even, tries to force away thoughts he rarely allows to surface; they are his friends yet they hardly know him, and they are not even to blame for that, because Pocho doesn’t want them to know him at all. He is quite content with keeping up the façade he’s held up for such a long time, but he is so tired and so bloody exhausted and he just doesn’t have the energy.

 

“I’m hanging up,” he says, then drops the phone onto the cold tiles.

 

 

 

 

Pocho swallows a handful of painkillers with energy drinks from his fridge and the sugary content gives him enough of a boost to go outside once the sun is starting to set and head to the outskirts, past the docks where there are stacked up containers in all colours like giant Legos, abandoned and quietly creaking under their own weight. The changing light drags their shadows across the rubble and split concrete. He meets a handful of people he only knows by appearances; they don’t know his name and he doesn’t know theirs. In fact, he knows nothing about them and they probably don’t have a single thing in common apart from trying to escape _something_. They spend their time in silence, quietly smoking and drinking and when the mood grabs them, they use the forest of containers as a canvas and draw an ever-growing, ever-changing mural onto them with a couple of ratty spray-paint cans.

 

It usually helps; to get away, pretend to be someone he’s not. But not this night, not with Javier’s voice looming in his head and the feel, the _taste,_ of Kun against his lips. Pocho knows he pretends otherwise, but he does think about Ku and his lack of self-preservation that almost matches his own. He is so utterly insecure that he hides it all beneath that brilliant smile and easy laugh and Pocho can admit to himself, in his own head, that he is intrigued. He wouldn’t even bother with Kun if he weren’t. But where Kun talks about love – Pocho is smarter than that. He is perfectly aware of the difference between love (an ill-advised and rather illusionary emotion) and the simple, truthful and physical desire and Pocho is used to giving into it whenever it flickers through his veins, brings his blood to pleasant warmth.

 

Around midnight, he receives a text from Javier, asking if he’s on his way and Pocho should either answer with a straight no, or ignore it entirely. But well, Pocho’s life is nothing if not a series of unfortunate decisions.

 

This will just be another one to add to it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pocho has always thought that the _Alvear Palace Hotel_ is a desperate place, full of desperate people, oozing money and extravagance and greed from every gap and pore, so much that the place stinks of it and Pocho detests it; detests it and the rats that frequent it. It’s almost an obscene image of seeing this old place filled with people who are too young to be fully aware its symbolism. Or perhaps age doesn’t come into the occasion; they are too _ignorant_ to realise it.

 

Behind closed doors, music is playing and lights are dimmed and the buzz of the crowd fills the big hall enough to make the air heavy. Only a handful of people are dancing, grinding their scarcely clad bodies together. The others appear happy to just drown themselves in uncountable amounts of alcohol that’s being handed out from behind no less than four bars, positioned in each corner. It’s already one or two hours past midnight. There is confetti stuck to the floor.

 

Pocho can spot Garay and Higuaín almost straight away; on opposite ends of the room weirdly enough, surrounded by girls in high heels and short skirts, which is a funny sight, he has to admit. He sees Javier too, back turned towards him with Paula standing close by, as well as Esteban and Gabriel. They’re chatting, looking relaxed, neither of them notices him, nor does anyone at first, which is a relief. It allows Pocho to acclimatise for a moment, to mentally prepare himself for the looks and the stares he’ll undoubtedly get because he knows what these people are like, how much they adore gossip.

 

He takes a solid breath and is about to step forward, when the birthday boy himself is appearing in his line of view, and Pocho tries to decide whether that’s good or rather unfortunate. Kun is smiling from ear to ear, cheeks flushed from alcohol and excitement, button eyes shimmering and drinking him in unashamedly, pausing at his lips, of course, and Pocho forgets to be annoyed about it.

Kun’s skin is shining wet and he can smell champagne; the ridiculously coloured t-shirt Kun is wearing is drenched in it, clinging to his chest like a second skin.

 

“You’re late.”

 

Pocho shrugs. “I was busy.”

 

“It’s lame anyway,” Kun replies and mirrors his movement. “I know my parents were trying, but –” and he trails off, makes a vague motion with his hand, never taking his eyes off Pocho for a second.

 

“Be grateful you have them,” Pocho can’t stop himself from saying, verbally punching the smile off Kun’s face straight away, who mutters a quick apology, but he shrugs it off. It doesn’t really matter. “Not enjoying your birthday then?”

 

“I’m enjoying it now,” Kun says, stepping closer. “I’m glad you came. I was hoping you would.” He licks his lips, earrings catching the light and multiplying it by a thousand and from up close, Pocho can see his pulse quickening, can almost feel the vibration from Kun’s ribcage and the warmth of his body and the blunt force of his desire being mirrored in the face in front of him. Pocho doesn’t move closer, but he doesn’t back away either. He reaches into his pocket, pulls something out and holds out his open palm between them. Kun’s brows push together. “What’s that?”

 

A heavy hand lands on his shoulder before he can reply.

 

“That the key to your heart, Pocho?”

 

He rolls his eyes and pries the sticky fingers off his shirt. “Piss off, Diego.” Then he turns back to Kun. “You said your parents wouldn’t let you move out. Well, now they won’t have a choice.”

 

Kun blinks at him, wide-eyed; it’s endearing in a way it shouldn’t be and Pocho glances over Kun’s shoulder to see that they have the others’ attention too now. They haven’t walked over yet, but Javier’s eyes are on them, and Esteban’s and Paula’s and Gabriel’s. Pocho does his best not to flip them all off.

 

“Is that a key to –” Kun begins, stuttering, but he cuts him off.

 

“To a flat. Nothing special. I already own the building and it’s been empty for a while, so you can move in whenever you want. If you don’t want it, it’ll be rented to someone else.”

 

“No,” Kun calls out hastily. “No, Jesus fuck, I want it. But – _Christ_ , Pocho. Fucking – fuck.”

 

“It’s nothing.”

 

“It’s not nothing,” he instantly disagrees, taking another step forward and now Pocho can smell a symphony of drinks on his breath; no wonder he’s so excitable. “It’s – fuck,” and he takes the key, looks at it entirely bewildered and then finds Pocho’s gaze straight away after he’s lifted his head again. “I love you.”

 

He almost flinches back. Nobody’s heard, nobody’s even noticed, because there are so many people here that it’s paradoxically intimate. “Don’t say that again.”

 

“Okay. I won’t. I promise. But, can we –” Kun glances at his watch, throws a quick look over his shoulder, and turns back towards him. “Can we get out of here? Go somewhere else, I don’t care.”

 

“It’s your party.” Pocho watches Kun’s throat work as he swallows almost nervously, forehead crinkled while he stares at Pocho, silently pleading. The crowd is still animated and he guesses it would take a while for anyone to notice Kun’s absence.

 

“You said you’d show me around,” Kun continues with his voice dropped. “If I ever got bored of good influences. Well, I’m bored. And I don’t even like most of these people.”

 

“Then why do you bother?”

 

“Yeah,” Kun smiles, “that’s kind of what I’m thinking right now. So, what’re you saying?”

 

At first, Pocho says nothing. Because if they leave now, together, there is only one way this is going to go. He knows it and Kun has already demonstrated plenty of times that he is determined for it to go this way. And Pocho could still say no and tell Kun to go back to his party and this idea of a life; he could keep pushing him away and be the goo Samaritan who is decent enough to spare Kun the heartache. But it hasn’t worked until now and somehow Pocho knows that Kun won’t be easy to get rid of in the future either.

Pocho doesn’t care what happens to him and he doesn’t care about others either and that’s his problem and Kun will find out sooner or later when it won’t be Pocho’s problem anymore.

 

“Fine,” he says and Kun should not be smiling at him like that, because this – in spite of all the arguing in his own head – will never be a good idea.

 

“Awesome,” Kun practically glows and his pulse is racing now, so much that the skin beneath his jaw is twitching and shivering. “Just – wait a second,” and he’s off, hastily pushing through the mass of people who are too drunk to notice much. Pocho heads back towards the door and is closing his fingers around the handle when Kun reappears with a jacket tucked beneath his arm and an enormous bottle of Russian Vodka in hand. “Okay. Lets go.”

 

 

 

 

“Where are we going?” Kun asks five minutes into the cab ride.

 

“You wanted me to show you around,” Pocho replies. “So I’m going to show you around.”

 

 

 

 

It’s partly furnished, but there is no electricity. The only light spilling into the empty rooms of the eerily quiet apartment stems from the buildings it’s surrounded by. It seems almost surreal, abandoned and detached, as if he and Kun were the last two people in this damned city, waiting for the world to end. He watches Kun as he turns and cranes his neck, imagines marking a trail down his tanned neck and twisting his finger into Kun’s hair until he hears him keen. Feeling on edge and frayed and inexplicably aroused, Pocho puts a cigarette between his lips and lights it, producing a faint orange glow that flickers across the immaculately plastered walls, the polished surfaces.

 

Their breaths echoing unnaturally loud between the walls, Pocho silently observes as Kun walks around, sneakers emitting the odd squeak on the shiny parquet floors. He hadn’t really thought much before he’d taken the key and decided to give it to Kun and it is no big deal, just like he said, but now he wonders if it’s too much; not in the overall scale of the gift itself, because technically Pocho hasn’t spent a single dime on it. Yet it is the gesture itself and the thought behind it and only in retrospect does Pocho realise that he might have just thrown himself in over his own head. It’s one thing just wanting to fuck someone but –

 

“Man, look at that view!” Kun calls over. He’s opened the French doors and is stepping out onto the balcony. They’re not on the top floor, but they’re fairly high up and the view is decent. Pocho stays leaned against the frame and when Kun leans forward over the railing to glance at the street below, he feels a weird twitch going through his right arm, as if he were about to reach out to grab Kun by the back of his shirt. Before he can do anything though, Kun spins around, hands encircling the metal bar behind him. His t-shirt is still damp, sticking to his body in an almost obscene fashion that Pocho would call desperate if it weren’t for that honest-to-God smile and the genuine _happiness_ in Kun’s eyes. He looks to goddamn content and all Pocho can think, like a bloody song stuck on repeat, is that he doesn’t deserve to get any of that. He hasn’t done this to be _nice_.

 

Kun is looking at him like he’s some fucking revelation and Pocho’s stomach twists and lurches before he can get a grip on himself. Before he can notice, Kun’s walked up to him, is so close that Pocho could just tilt his head to touch his forehead against Kun’s. The almost smoked out cigarette is snatched from his fingers and Kun takes a deep drag before flipping it off the balcony.

 

“You said you don’t smoke.”

 

“Things change,” and then he’s starting to lean in.

 

Pocho turns his head, turns to the side, before Kun can be stupid enough to kiss him. He does not need this to get any more sentimental than it already is, so he crosses the living room and heads to the kitchen where Kun put the vodka. With shaking hands he unscrews the top and put the bottle to his lips, so big and heavy that it strains his arm and he feels Kun’s presence right behind him more than he hears him. Pocho puts the bottle back down again and in here it is so dark that he can just see the shimmering glass, the outlines of his hands against the marble surface of the kitchen island. There is warm breath ghosting over his neck, tentative fingers coming around his waist, brushing over the fabric of his shirt and encircling him until Kun is solidly pressed up against his back, face buried in the crook of his neck.

 

Pocho tenses; he can’t help it. He doesn’t know what’s suddenly gotten into Kun’s head that he feels like this is in any way appropriate; he doesn’t know what’s gotten into his own head, because he feels his insides clench and a buzz and shiver rolling up his spine as Kun presses against him, seemingly squeezing all air out of his body. Taking a last, burning gulp vodka, relishing its sharpness as it drops into his stomach, Pocho takes hold of Kun’s wrists and pries his arms away, turning around in the process. Kun’s face is blank as he drops his arms to his side, but he doesn’t back off and he doesn’t say anything, so Pocho holds his gaze for a moment before moving past him and heading down the corridor. He can hear steps behind him as he kicks off his shoes and unbuckles his belt, loud clank echoing between the walls as it drops down. Pocho walks until his toes dig into the soft carpet lying at the foot of the bed.

 

Kun is hesitantly following him on weak legs, clearly apparent even in the dark. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands, helplessly tangling them in his own shirt as he approaches, eyes flickering towards the bed and Pocho can only guess that he is blushing when their gazes lock. Kun’s pupils are blown with arousal, but he doesn’t dare to tape the first step and Pocho is glad that at least that much is clear between them. But if Kun expects some grand gesture from him, expects a declaration of non-existent feelings and whatnot, he’s going to be proven wrong.

 

Unceremoniously, Pocho grabs the hem of his shirt and pulls it over his head in one swift motion. Wide eyes follows the outlines of his torso, his arms and the black ink embedded in his skin. Subconsciously or not, Kun puts one foot in front of the other until there is only an arm’s length between them and it would be no trouble at all for either of them to reach out and _touch_. Kun’s chest is rising and falling with every trembling breath he pulls in through his parted lips, glistening with spit because he keeps licking them and again it remains unanswered whether he does it on purpose or not. Pocho wants to swipe across them with his thumb, part them even further and _God_ , he wants to do so many things and should do none.

 

But he takes Kun’s face between his hands and angles his head and Kun groans even before Pocho’s lips press against his, swallowing every further sound. Instantly, the heat is almost unbearable. Pocho slides one arm around Kun’s shoulders, exposing his neck and he lets his mouth slide down Kun’s cheek to mercilessly dig his teeth into the spot just below his jaw. Kun gasps and starts to writhe against him, hot and rock-hard as Pocho moves his other hand continuously downwards.

 

“Oh God,” is huffed against his hair, making the ends of his nerves tickle. “God, Pocho, I –”

 

He doesn’t let Kun finish, doesn’t allow him to utter one more syllable, pulls him in for another searing kiss before he spins them and pushes forward until Kun loses his balance and falls back, until he is a quivering mess atop of pristinely white sheets, too aware of his own body and so utterly willing. He peels his own t-shirt off, exposing a body honed by exercise, darkened by the sun, entirely unspoiled. It’s an image so perfect that Pocho wishes he could freeze it until he’d painted every last drop of sweat pearling from Kun’s collarbones.

 

Kun pushes himself up onto his elbows and swallows thickly, the muscles in his abdomen trembling. Pocho starts to unbutton his jeans.

 

“I thought,” Kun starts but stumbles over his own tongue. “Thought you didn’t want to fuck me.”

 

He hooks his thumbs into the waistbands of his jeans and briefs, “I guess that changed too,” and pulls them down in one go.

 

Kun’s mouth opens in a silent groan and his elbows slip out from under him, leaving him flat on the mattress, which dips slightly when Pocho lowers himself onto it. In a heartbeat, he’s aligned his body with Kun’s, hands on either side of his head, drinking in his wide eyes and red cheeks and already bruised lips; then fingers dig into his shoulder and pull him down. He licks into Kun’s open mouth, uses his weight to pin him down and fumbles for Kun’s fly. Biting at the corner of his mouth, Pocho pushes his open palm into Kun’s jeans and –

 

“Oh, fuck,” Kun calls out and instinctively bucks up into Pocho’s hand. “Oh God, _please_ ,” and he wastes no time in trying to shimmy out of his jeans with Pocho’s help. He can’t keep still, can’t keep quiet and Kun is so stunning this way, Pocho thinks; writhing and moaning and already covered in a thin layer of sweat that makes his skin glisten. He runs his hands up Kun’s thighs, moves punishingly close to his erection and presses their groins together with one sudden movement. Kun curls around him, arms and legs trapping Pocho in this position, desperate for contact and friction, and Pocho takes his bottom lip between his teeth, drags two fingers down Kun’s spine. His back burns where Kun digs his fingernails into his skin as if he wants to crawl out of his body and into him and he presses close, ever closer, shamelessly groaning until his strained voice fills the room.

 

“I won’t go slow,” Pocho breathes into Kun’s neck. “And I won’t be gentle.”

 

There is a split second that passes where Kun goes almost weirdly still. “I don’t want you to be,” he says.

 

It all turns into a blur of sounds and sensations. Suddenly, Pocho feels almost delirious, like time is speeding up and slowing down at the same time and he is floating in the middle, entirely detached and then Kun gasps his name and pulls him back down. He pushed Kun into the pillows, drapes himself over his back and pushes into him, seizes his hips and digs in until he’s sure to leave marks. Kun is tearing at the sheets, face hidden and moans and gasps muffled by his own arm he’s biting into, but he’s not holding back. It’s invigorating to see it. Every time he snaps his hips forward, an almost-sob leaves Kun’s lips and his face opens up until he is so breathtakingly raw and real, and Pocho can’t do anything but draw invisible lines onto his back, see the dark lines his nails leave behind that will be bright red come morning.

 

Their bodies slide together with increasing speed, breath getting shorter until it’s almost gone and tension building, higher and higher and when Pocho closes his eyes, he sees and hears nothing. Kun comes with a half-sob, half-shout and Pocho follows a few moments later.

 

Then he gets swallowed up.

 

 

 

***

 

 

It’s overwhelming. Downright suffocating to a point where he is sure it’s the one thing turning him insane. The fact that he is made up of two people who hated him to an undefined extent and whom he loathed in return, in his own way. He has his father’s intelligence and sharpness that allows him to jump ahead in school, and he has his mother’s creativity and tendency to madness and it turns out to be a not-so-good combination. And in between Javier and school and painting, he starts on a slippery slope, a downward spiral. It feels like drowning, to keep in tune with the imagery of his own mind, and he willingly opens his mouth and lets the water in.

 

He becomes self-destructive and is entirely aware of it, even starts to enjoy it and he works hard, Pocho really does. He turns eighteen and starts to spend his father’s money, because the sheer amount of it is weighing him down, yet no matter how much he throws away, it doesn’t become less and it sticks to him like a rash, and accepting that no matter how hard he tries, he can’t destroy his father’s legacy, is one of the hardest things he ever stomachs. He turns eighteen and goes to art school and people look at his paintings and turn him into an overnight sensation. Yet he also has to accept that it doesn’t matter how much paint he dribbles and drags across canvases, his mother and her colours and sculptures and _eyes_ will haunt him for the rest of his life.

 

He is the two of them put together and there are some things he can’t change, but that doesn’t mean Pocho is not going to try. He wants to tear out every single piece inside of him that’s _theirs_ ; tear it out and rip it to shreds and if that means there will be nothing left of him in the end – then so be it.

 

 

 

***

 

 

When Pocho wakes up, he is surprised. Not because Kun is plastered to his side, because that’s something that is still on his radar – but because he wakes up. He blinks against the light spilling in from the windows and there is still a dull pressure at the back of his head, but the nauseating pain from the previous week is gone and he thinks he might even be patient enough to have coffee before taking his first load of pills. So Pocho lies on his back and stares at the ceiling, feels Kun breathing against his chest and –

 

He untangles himself from the sheets wrapped around his lower body. Kun huffs and groans, but Pocho is already on his feet and pulling his clothes on. This is a different itch that’s suddenly implanted under his skin and Kun may or may not have something to do with it, but he can’t help Pocho with that. He is just doing up his jeans and looking for his t-shirt when the bed creaks and Kun sits up. Pocho turns to look at him. Sheets pooling in his laps, hair mussed and eyes still small from sleep, he’s sporting an impressive amount of red blotches and marks on his neck and chest. It’s not the season for scarves and turtlenecks, so chances are high that by the end of the day, this is going to be common knowledge. Pocho isn’t bothered by it per se, but he hates it when everyone gets into his business.

 

“Where’re you going?” His voice is so hoarse it’s barely above a whisper.

 

Pocho fishes for his t-shirt and pulls it over his head. “I need to work,” he says and remembers that he left his shoes in the corridor, so he turns to the door.

 

“Can I come?”

 

Pocho looks over his shoulder. “Do you remember what I said to you about attachment?” he asks. “This is you not becoming attached, all right? So enjoy your new place. I’ll see you around.”

 

And without waiting for a response, he slips out into the corridor.

 

 

 

 

He locks himself into his room for four days straight. He smokes a lot, he drinks a lot, probably fulfils every cliché because Pocho works best when he’s high. But it’s exhilarating and nothing makes him feel as alive as when he’s crouching on the floor, covered in paint and secretly spilling his soul onto a canvas. Pocho finishes one and starts another, works himself into a frenzy and only stops when someone almost takes down his front door because he hasn’t been answering his phone. He stands and wipes a smear of Prussian blue across his chest and looks across to one wall where there are now a good dozen canvases of finished work and one lying of the floor that will not take him much longer if he can keep up the pace. It’s enough for an exhibition and Paula’s grandmother would be over the moon if she knew.

 

Pocho carefully locks the door behind him and heads for the entrance. Esteban and Nicolás are on the other side. The latter has a phone pressed to his ear.

 

“He’s alive,” he says into it and hangs up.

 

Pocho raises his brows. “What the fuck?”

 

Esteban glowers at him. “Yeah, Pocho, what the fuck?” he shoots back at him. “Would be kind of nice to get the occasional sign of life from you. Javier is going nuts because none of us could get a hold of you. Jesus, man, we thought you were gone.”

 

“I was working,” Pocho replies. “And aren’t you being a tad dramatic? I do this all the time.”

 

“Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t answer you goddamn phone,” Nicolás throws in. “I mean, you’ve been acting weird lately.”

 

“And considering what you’ve been tossing lately,” Esteban adds, of course he does, “I thought you’d choked on your own vomit.”

 

“Lovely image,” Pocho can’t help but comment, and it makes Esteban glower even more. “Well, I’m not dead. And I don’t plan on choking on my own vomit, so is that it? Or was there something else you wanted, because I’ve got things to do.”

 

“It’s Kun’s housewarming party tonight. Thought you might want to come.” Nicolás is looking at him in that certain way that tells Pocho instantly that everybody knows. “Since you’ve left quite an impression on him.”

 

Pocho shrugs and shows him a lopsided grin. “If you’ve got it, you’ve got it, right?” It doesn’t lift the sullen mood straight away, but at least they crack a smile.

 

 

 

 

The place is a mess when Pocho arrives. There are cardboard boxes everywhere and empty bottles, pizza cartons and Kun happily smiling in the middle of it. Pocho gets there with Diego and Martín, so he sticks with them for the first hour, avoids Javier as much as he can and goes through a pack of cigarettes he smokes on the balcony. For the most part, the night remains uneventful and he’s already gotten his hopes up for slipping out early with nobody noticing, but then the door to the balcony snaps shut and Javier is out there with him. It’s not a roof terrace, but it’s fairly big yet suddenly, the balcony feels far too small.

 

“So,” Pocho says, because he is not interested in delaying the inevitable. “Any reason you freaked out like you did?”

 

“I was worried.”

 

Javier is wearing a white t-shirt and grey jeans and looks so fucking regal that Pocho can’t help but look. He gets annoyed with himself for it, because that’s how it always is.

 

“So? I’m an adult, Javier. I’m not your charge, I’m not your fucking boyfriend and –”

 

“Are you Kun’s?”

 

“What –” Pocho blinks. “Are you bloody kidding me? Are you _jealous_?”

 

Javier lifts his chin. “What if I am?”

 

“Then you’re insane. I’m not Kun’s boyfriend and I’m not yours either.”

 

“Because of Kun?”

 

“Because you have a girlfriend, you dick,” Pocho replies, probably louder than he should have. “I thought we already had this conversation. Why are we having it again?”

 

Javier deflates visibly, suddenly looks tired and runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t know,” he says and Pocho doesn’t believe him. He has no fucking clue what’s going on, but he knows Javier and he knows that Javier doesn’t do things without reason.

 

“Bullshit,” he tells him because of that. “That is such a load of bullshit. And frankly, I don’t give a fuck what’s gotten into your head, but you need to get over it, because it’s pissing me –”

 

“Everything all right?” Both their heads snap around. Kun is leaning against the frame, brows raised quizzically. “Sorry, I didn’t want to interrupt, but –”

 

“It’s fine,” Javier cuts him off with one last glance at Pocho. “I was leaving anyway.” And with that he pushes past Kun and disappears inside.

 

Kun steps out, not shutting the door behind him but almost, eyeing Pocho curiously. “You guys okay?”

 

“Like he said,” Pocho answers curtly. “We’re fine.”

 

The night grows increasingly frantic after that. He can recollect much of some bits in between, but he knows that at some point, Higuaín and Garay turn into Pipita and Eze and he ends up doing lines with both of them on the new glass table in the living room, with Kun draped over his back. People come and go until the early hours of the morning and then it’s only a handful left, the inner circle, as Zaba declares, and nobody does a double-take when Kun twists his hand into Pocho’s shirt and pulls him down the corridor and into his bedroom.

 

 

 

 

It becomes a regular thing after that, rather quickly, Pocho has to admit to himself. But it’s okay; it takes his mind off things when he’s not working, which he’s doing a lot of lately. They go out together; to the docks or Palermo or some place else because one of them has an idea. Most nights, Pocho heads back with Kun without second thought and he lets Kun climb into his lap and grind down on him, and Kun groans things against his neck that he should probably pay attention to but doesn’t. He does wonder, occasionally, how all of this actually happened and how Kun went from the blushing almost-virgin to this. But Pocho doesn’t ponder on it, because that’d mean surfacing an answer he already has but decides to ignore.

 

They never go back to his, because there are some lines Pocho doesn’t like to cross. Kun is already invading all the space that Javier’s left behind after their fight and that’s plenty. Before this – whatever it is that’s going on between them – becomes suffocating or escalates into something it shouldn’t, Pocho goes off on his own, heads to places where he knows he won’t run into anyone, picks up a guy or a girl and cleanses his palette. For two months or more, it becomes a pattern and the main part of it is the fact that he always goes back to Kun.

 

And it’s something Pocho doesn’t think about either.

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

“I don’t have anything figured out,” Kun says one night, lying on his stomach and looking at Pocho from a pillow away. “I don’t have any clue what to do with my life.”

 

“What do you want me to say to that?” Pocho asks, thinking that he ought to be going back to his to take his pills. He can already feel his heart twitching.

 

Kun shrugs, rustling the sheets. “I don’t know. Maybe that nobody does?”

 

“Nobody has it figured out,” he says and Kun smiles.

 

“You neither?”

 

“Nobody,” Pocho stresses and faces upwards. “It’s impossible, because life fucks with you whether you plan it or not.”

 

Fingers close around his wrist. Pocho doesn’t move away. “So what are we supposed to do? Just – go with the flow?”

 

“Why not?”

 

“Because it’s terrifying,” Kun replies quietly, almost imperceptibly scooting closer. “I know people say you got to take a leap into cold water, but what happens then?”

 

“Who knows? It’s just something you can’t change. It’s how this shit works. Sometimes you have to jump into the depth, and see if you can come out at the shallow end.”

 

 

 

 

to be continued...


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He knew what it was like to love one who did not - or could not - love you back. But he'd had no choice. None of them did._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Recreational drug and alcohol abuse
> 
> A/N: For dreamofthem and the_wild_son, who were always rooting for these two and requested their history to be told. Set in the same 'verse as By the Rio de la Plata, but stands entirely on it own. Sorry this took so long. Life has been crazy and weird. Feedback is much loved.

  
_He knew what it was like to love one who did not - or could not - love you back. But he'd had no choice. None of them did._

**Melissa de la Cruz, _Revelations_**   


  
  
  
  


***

  
  
  
He wakes to the sound of rain hitting the windows. Like gunshots from a distance, drops hit the glass in a steady rhythm, _pam pam pam_ , and they spread out and pearl down in erratic line that glisten only fractionally and in certain angles when he turns his head on the pillow and faces the grey curtain encircling Buenos Aires. It’s only been two hours since he’d gone to bed, not alone, but he has no mind to pay the other person in the room any attention. He slides out from underneath the covers and stands in front of the window, carpet soft beneath his feet, tickling his toes. It doesn’t take long for a still warm body to plaster itself against his back. He can feel the other’s arousal, teeth grazing the skin of his shoulder, a quiet hum. Pocho doesn’t know his name.  
  
“I like morning sex,” he heatedly breathes into the dark lines of tattoos that are buried beneath Pocho’s skin.  
  
“And I’d like to take a shower,” Pocho says and peels the guy off his back, steps away from the window to turn towards his bathroom. “Show yourself out.”  
  
  
  


***

  
  
  
Pocho doesn’t know what he’d do if he weren’t able to create anything with his hands, to draw or paint (never sculpt, and he tells himself that it’s got nothing to do with his mother). He wouldn’t know what to do, what to say, or how to let it all go when his skin feels too tight and his head to small. When he feels like he’s been holding his breath and has forgotten how to breathe, the first stroke of a colour-dripping brush opens his lungs. It’s like cold water on his lips and his quiet heart going _thump thump thump_ in his chest; like the first gleam of sun after hours of night.   
  
It’s so much a part of him that he can’t shut it down and he doesn’t sit in his workroom and sketches doodles of Kun when he’s on his mind. Pocho is not an idiot and he doesn’t like to waste his time, but he keeps thinking and he keeps wondering, imagining if he could re-create the colour of Kun’s eyes, almost black but not quite and warm although they shouldn’t be and he spends hours then, fucking _hours_ trying to replicate them, only to realise in the end that he can’t, that there is some inexplicable detail missing and Pocho doesn’t want to name that detail _life_.   
  
He tears up papers and canvases and makes it all disappear by the end of the day, despite knowing that it will start all over again the next.   
  
  
  


***

  
  
  
As the end of the year draws closer and the weeks to December pass in an almost monotonous state, it starts to become almost unbearably hot. The air is heavy with heat, so humid that shirts stick to chests and backs and small pools of sweat collect in the hollows between collarbone and neck. Dust and dry pebbles grind beneath the soles of people’s shoes, scratching over the flickering roads that turn into rivers on the horizon, blurring the edges. Blinds are shut and curtains drawn, willing away a sun that won’t budge, and air-conditioning suddenly seems like a gift from God himself. Miserable people drag themselves from one place to the next, only occasionally relieved by a sudden downpour of rain.  
  
Today, Pocho is unfortunately one of them and Kun is walking far too close for his liking, brushing his arm against Pocho’s with almost every step. He seems cheerful, which might have something to do with the two lines of coke he had before they headed out together. It might also be down to Pocho agreeing to spend more time with him (even more time, he corrects mentally) and head out for dinner before they all meet up with the guys later that evening.  
  
If he is honest to himself, Pocho finds that he doesn’t like it, doesn’t appreciate that Kun has, without his consent, become the focal point of his barely existing social life. It is like he simply barged in head first, elbows out, and now he refuses to budge. He spends entire days in Kun’s presence and it’s suffocating, taking away all air in his chest as if his ribs were caving in and piercing his lungs. They have a silent agreement, Pocho is certain, but he can’t be certain that Kun hasn’t forgotten, gets caught up in some sort of illusion because Pocho doesn’t tell him not to. He tries to take hold of Pocho’s arm occasionally, like he wants to slide his hand down Pocho’s skin and intertwine their fingers. Pocho moves away every time.   
  
They find a small bistro tucked away in a small alley just off _Parque Lezama_ , sit down in the overshadowed courtyard and order. Pocho doesn’t know what he’s actually ordered, he doesn’t feel like eating anyway, hasn’t in a while and his stomach is still churning from a migraine that refuses to go quietly. Esteban won’t up his dosage; can’t, because it’s still his father’s practice and Esteban is not authorized and if Pocho wants to get anything stronger, he’ll have to go see another doctor, perhaps even a shrink, and that is not an option. He doesn’t need another person trying to look inside his head. He’s got plenty of people attempting to dig around in it already.   
  
He leans back in his chair and holds the icy glass of water against his temple, closes his eyes for a moment to will away the throbbing pain behind his eyes. It numbs his mind, feels like a limp inside his head because nothing is going right and it feels unbalanced and too slow. He is barely aware of Kun nudging his foot.   
  
“You okay?” echoes over to him through the thick air, still hot, still too heavy.  
  
“’M fine,” he grinds out and gets up, legs feeling weak at the knees and vision blackening out momentarily before he can get a grip of himself. “Be right back,” and he heads inside, find the small bathroom that is just a crooked wooden door, a toilet and a sink cramped into such a small space that Pocho can barely move. He is tempted to just brutally bang his head against the tiles until it cracks. Fortunately (or perhaps stupidly), he finds the packet of Vitamin Ms in his pocket because he’d forgotten to take it out. Usually, Pocho doesn’t like to carry it around, take it out of the safe vicinity of his flat; he doesn’t trust himself with it, he certainly doesn’t trust the others with it either.  
  
He takes on pill at first and after a moment’s hesitation, he throws back another, makes a promise not to drink anything while they’re in his system, despite knowing that he won’t keep it and waits a couple of minutes to let the effect set it. Then he heads back out. Kun is staring at him like he always does, eyes big and pupils like pinheads and if he notices that something is different, he doesn’t say so.  
  
  
  
  
They meet at Eze’s, because apparently he’s got a maisonette penthouse with a roof terrace that spans over the two floors. When Pocho and Kun get there some time around eight, Pipita is already there, looking flushed and dishevelled. Eze flashes them a grin that screams _I just got laid_ and Pocho does not want to get into that, because those two are the weirdest non-couple he’s ever seen. Fernando and Zara walk out of what he assumes to be the kitchen the next moment, so there is no time for Kun to make a dubious comment.   
  
It is a nice place, Pocho observes as they head to the living area, all kept in neutral tones, with a slight sixties modernism touch. The blinds are partially drawn and the light that falls inside is such a rich orange that it seems to bleed over cream-coloured sofa cushions. The walls are bare except for one painting that Pocho raises his eyebrows at.   
  
“Where’d you get that?” he calls over to Eze, who takes a swig of his beer and walks up to him. Kun is still hovering over his shoulder, but Pocho is ignoring him for now. He needs his mind to breathe.   
  
“My aunt gave it to me when I moved in, I think. Either her or my yaya. I think it’s a bit weird, but it’s not too freaky, so I put it up. I like the colours. Why?”  
  
Pocho leans closer, squints. “It’s by Louise Bourgeois,” he says, “probably from the sixties. You should have it valued.”  
  
“Never heard of her,” Eze says and Pocho didn’t think so. “How much is it worth?”  
  
Pocho shrugs, takes a couple of steps back, arm bumping against Kun’s. “Couple of millions, probably. She didn’t paint a lot; more of an abstract sculptor.”  
  
Eze splutters, but it’s Kun’s voice that’s close to his ear. “How do you know?”  
  
“She was a friend of my mother’s.”  
  
He turns and walks out onto the balcony before someone can say anything and he doesn’t quite know why he said what he did. He thinks he remembers the old lady; eccentric glasses and voice hoarse from having smoked a packet a day since she was sixteen. She’d ruffled his hair with brightly coloured, sharp fingernails. Pocho quickly rubs a hand over his face, willing the blurry images away, and has a look around.   
  
The roof terrace is framed by wooden railings, overgrown with ivy and other plants that shield it away from the sun, so it’s actually quite pleasant. There are a couple of deckchairs and beanbags, granite cubes that are functioning as tables. He counts five pitchers sitting on top of them, shining in an unnaturally green colour. Absinthe – he shouldn’t be surprised.   
  
  
  
  
It’s an unsteady evening, people coming and leaving and between alcohol and weed being passed around, lines of coke and pipes filled with crack, the mood fluctuates between elated and energetic to almost calm and lethargic. Pocho finds himself hanging somewhere in between, still feeling numb from the morphine pills he’d taken earlier, supplemented by everything else that’s constantly added to his system, yet also on edge and irritated by Kun crowding into his space, by too many people getting into his eyesight, hot bodies rubbing and sliding together, voices mingling, sounds fusing into one massive pulp that seems to clog Pocho’s arteries and head.  
  
He tries to zone out systematically, first by drinking too much, watching sugar melt and burn and dribble into a glass that is about four times the size any glass holding absinthe should be, then by smoking more weed than he has in a while, throwing back two more morphine pills when nobody’s looking. But the voices don’t quieten down and the persistent itch stays firmly embedded into his skin. Kun slides into the deckchair behind him, breathes hotly against Pocho’s neck, slides his tongue out trace the protruding bones of his spine. His hands cover Pocho’s where they’re casually draped over his knees and Kun slowly drags them up Pocho’s arms, fingertips following the lines of his tattoos and it is another gesture so intimate and affectionate, added to the fluttering kisses pressed against his skin, that Pocho would shove Kun off of him if he cared in the slightest; If he could do as much as move a finger in his current state of mind.  
  
It is an odd moment to think about Javier, yet Pocho does. He thinks Javier would have seized the moment of general delirium to send him a pointed glance, nothing more, not Kun’s enthusiastic display, and it would have been enough for Pocho to follow Javier inside, likely into the bathroom, because it tends to be the only room that can be locked in their friends’ homes. Perhaps Pocho would have gone down on him, blown Javier kneeling on cold and polished tiles until he lost his cemented composure for a rare handful of seconds. They would have returned onto the roof terrace, dishevelled but calm façade back in place, and nobody would have said a thing. Nobody would have taken a second glance in their direction.  
  
Now though, Pocho can feel them watching, maybe expecting a reaction from him, to slip out of his indifference, to acknowledge that Kun is kind of going to town on his neck, nosing the soft skin behind his ear, biting down, licking, running his lips along Pocho’s shoulder. He pushes Kun’s hands to the side, peels himself out of his arms, back unpleasantly warm from too much shared body heat. He throws back the last of his absinthe, suppresses a wince as it burns down his throat and heads inside without glancing back, without having to twist his neck to know that Kun is ungracefully scrambling after him, possibly falling over his feet and one or two deckchairs to get into the living room. Pocho hears his clumsy, uncoordinated steps that quieten down once Kun reaches the carpet. His hot puffs of breath hit the back of Pocho’s neck before he reaches the kitchen, but Pocho winds out of Kun’s grasp before the other can lock his arms in front of his sternum, eyes scanning the chrome surfaces for a clean glass. He finds one in one of the cabinets on the left and fills it with tab water, fishes another morphine pill from his pocket and washes it down, will away anxiety and the stubborn pain sitting behind his eyeballs.   
  
Eventually, Pocho turns around again slowly, sees Kun standing in the doorway, head tilted and fingers hooked through the belt loops of his ripped jeans. His hair is mussed, stuck to his head in some placed, but brushed out of his forehead entirely. He looks young in the dim lights pouring over his shoulders from the lamps in the living room. Young and – Pocho can’t really pinpoint it, isn’t sure if there is even a word for how Kun looks right now and he can’t even tell if he feels good about it or not, because his pills are kicking in, lulling him into a state where he is even unsure about the actual limits and dimensions of his own body; a state in which he normally never leaves his flat, only stays in his bed, or paints, drifts in and out. It’s not a good idea that he is here now. Not a good idea that he is here with Kun.   
  
“You know what?” Kun asks him, but he sounds far away; sounds like there is an invisible, but still thick and solid wall between them. “I really want you to fuck me.” He licks his lips as if for emphasis and makes his way over to where Pocho is leaning against the counter, putting the glass down and sliding it across the shiny surface. When Kun is standing right in front of him, he presses his palms to the flat expanse of Pocho’s stomach, slides his hands underneath Pocho’s t-shirt and up to his chest, back down again and around his waist, coming to rest at the small of his back.   
  
Pocho barely feels the sensation on his skin. It’s a whisper of a touch, so faint that he’s not sure if he’s already completely out of his or just very close. Kun presses closer, presses up against him, so eager it’s almost desperate and maybe it’s losing its appeal, Pocho wonders for a moment, but that’s not it, because Kun’s always been eager, always will be eager to please as well, since it’s all he’s ever had to do in his life. He noses Pocho’s jaw, buries his face against his neck, breathes like Pocho is air to his lungs and starts circling his hips, lets his hands crawl underneath the waistband of Pocho’s jeans, desperate to lure a response out of him. But Pocho barely has half a mind to pay proper attention, doesn’t move away but doesn’t react much either, just tilts his head back and stares at the ceiling, at the shadows drawn across it and the minor irregularities in the plaster. Kun bites at his collarbone, seems to be weirdly, disgustingly content with just being close to him, physically, and Pocho tries to figure out what he saw in Kun earlier, what it was that threw him off that moment.  
  
They’ve become awfully familiar with each other, that much he is perfectly aware of, because Kun fills the space left behind by Javier, that constant presence by his side, so different and yet eerily similar in so many ways, but – but Javier and he; they have never been quite like this. Mainly because there hadn’t been endless pining or any embarrassing attempts to seduce each other. Kun is still falling over himself to get Pocho’s attention, whereas Javier has always just had it and never had to try. Pocho is used to feeling desired, admired even. And that thing before, that flicker in Kun’s gaze – it wasn’t desire or admiration. Not even lust or want and suddenly it strikes Pocho.  
  
It was _need_. Desperate and raw and unhinged. And needing someone, being needed; it’s nothing Pocho ever wants to sign up for. It’s nothing he’s exactly comfortable with and it is exactly why Kun has been a generally bad idea from the start, because this kind of attachment is a burden to his already clustered mind.   
  
He pushes at Kun, forces him to stop, to step back and it’s –  
  
Kun looks at him like he’s the light of his fucking life or some shit; his eyes, his entire face brightening and it’s then Pocho understands that he likes him, cares for him, not like Kun wants him to, needs him to, and probably not like Kun thinks he does. But Pocho _cares_ , whether he wants to or not, and he cares enough to realise that this thing between them – whatever the hell it is – has gone as far as it can. It needs to end, and it needs to end now, before there will be more collateral damage than what’s inevitable either way. Before Kun can dig his persistent fingers in too deep, come too close and break everything until it all collapses around them like a house of cards.  
  
“Get off,” he says and it most likely comes out harsher than he intended, or perhaps exactly like wants it to.  
  
Kun blinks and smiles. “I was trying to,” he says with a wink and is about to move closer again, but Pocho presses a solid hand to his chest.  
  
“I mean it, Kun,” he repeats. “Get off.”  
  
When Kun still doesn’t budge, Pocho takes matters into his own hands and pushes past him, walks out into the hallway, again without turning back, and heads for the front door, because he might be high and up to his eyeballs filled with morphine, but he is still perfectly aware of himself. And right now, he needs to leave, needs to head home and hopefully fall into a coma for a day or two.   
  
“Pocho?”   
  
He puts his hand on the door handle and pulls, still refuses to turn his head, because if he does, he fears he might end up staying after all. “Go play with your friends, Kun,” he says and leaves.  
  
  
  


***

  
  
  
Pocho knows about legacies. After all, he’s spent his entire life trying to live up to his mother’s. He’s spent half his life trying to destroy his father’s.   
  
He hasn’t really been successful with either.  
  
And maybe there’s a good reason for that. Maybe he’s just really shit at letting go.   
  
  
  


***

  
  
  
Pocho doesn’t go out of his way to avoid Kun, but he does keep distance, meaning he goes to places Kun won’t be and won’t show up halfway through the night, mingling with people whose faces he forgets the minute he turns his head and whose hands stop burning on his skin the second they’re not touching anymore. He’s pretty sure he’s drinking more than ever, perfectly aware how quickly he’s gone through his stash, how his entire life is a downward spiral and he’s trying not to drag anyone down with him.  
  
The place is grimy, downright filthy and crowded. The air is stale and the entire run is bathed in a dark, reddish light with occasional bursts of orange, music thrumming deeply, heavily, thick in the air and almost tangible. He feels sweat running down between his shoulder blades, the stretch of his damp shirt across his chest, pulls a hand away from his belt and makes his way past the bar, ducks through some pearly tassels that are framing the doorway behind it.   
  
They backyard isn’t a yard per se. There’s a narrow alley, bare stone and split concrete, overgrown with weeds and littered with all kinds of rubbish and the smell is foul, like rotten eggs and stale water from docks. Pocho breathes in and the air is so humid that he practically tastes it on his tongue. He takes one step to the side, leans against the wall and reaches into his pocket to retrieve some leftover weed, tries to take his time rolling a spliff but his hands are still shaking and they haven’t stopped in a while. He sighs with relief when he can finally tuck that damn thing between his lips to light it.   
  
The pearl tassels clatter together and another person steps out, looking straight at him, and Pocho tries not to roll his eyes as he blows smoke into Pipita’s direction.  
  
“Following me?” he asks with an edge to his voice that’s always there lately.   
  
Pipita is unaffected, smiles and looks almost _smug_ , and definitely soberer than Pocho’s ever seen him, he thinks. “Nah, don’t flatter yourself, man,” Pipita grins and steps closer. Pocho hands him the spliff without hesitation, hoping that it’ll shut him up, but he has no such luck. “Just scouting for a couple of new places to hang out, you know?” he continues to drawl and stretches just slightly, rolls his head to one side and then the other, looks at Pocho through his lashes.   
  
“Did you leave your boyfriend inside?”  
  
Pipita shakes his head. “Eze’s not my boyfriend,” he replies. “He’s –” and he makes an odd motion with his head, probably hoping that it will fill in for words he doesn’t say, giving an explanation he doesn’t have. “Anyway, we’re kind of not talking right now, and I don’t want to run into him. Sort of like you and Kun.”  
  
Pocho lets the sweet smoke circulate in his mouth before he blows it out through his nose. He shifts his weight from one leg to the other. “I don’t care about Kun.”  
  
“Huh, obviously,” Pipita huffs but it sounds – off. Displeased.  
  
“It’s none of your damn business,” Pocho says and hates how he suddenly sounds defensive.   
  
“Kun is my best friend,” Pipita retorts and damn does he sound sober now. “I’ve been friends with him his entire life and half of that time he’s been in love with you. And you know it.”  
  
He flicks the glimmering ash onto the concrete. “Kun needs to grow up. He knew how it was going to be. I told him he shouldn’t get attached.”  
  
“That’s what Kun does!” Pipita exclaims startlingly loud and Pocho just refrains from flinching, because he doesn’t know Pipita well, but he sure as hell has never seen him like that. “He gets attached. He focuses all he has on the one thing he wants. And that’s you. And he’s just going to wait around for you and you’re going to break his heart.”  
  
Pocho swallows thickly, air coming in short because it’s just do damn heavy and thick with humidity. “That’s not my problem,” he presses out and moves to push past Pipita, suddenly feeling cornered and caged.   
  
“You’re an ass,” Pipita calls after him when Pocho is already halfway down the alley.  
  
“I’m not trying to be nice,” he throws back and does his best to disappear against the dark backdrop of the night.  
  
  
  


***

  
  
  
It’s a rash decision. But perhaps it’s not. Perhaps his mind has been so clouded that he just didn’t realise until now that his it’s been made up all along. His skin feels too tight and he can sense the ceilings of his apartment dropping lower and lower and Pocho just needs to get out before he gets crushed. He sits in her office, listens to the old grandfather clock ticking away in the corner, eyes skimming over the hundreds and hundreds of books in the shelves behind her desk. Her lips are bright red again but this time she’s wearing pine nut-sized emeralds on her ears and a solitary stone around her neck that is as big as a golf ball. Pocho can count no less than nine rings on her bony and freckled fingers. Her eyes eye hidden behind glasses with lenses so thick that her eyes appear twice their actual size.  
  
“Don’t get me wrong, dear,” she says and he will never stop being surprised at how strong her voice still is despite her old age. “I’m ecstatic, even if I don’t appear to be. I just didn’t expect you to change your mind.” She waits, perhaps waiting for Pocho to give her a proper explanation, but he doesn’t really have one that would satisfy her curiosity, so he doesn’t say anything at all. “Well,” she continues with a soft smile. “I guess it’ll be nice for you to return to your roots.”  
  
“I’m not returning to my roots,” he replies. “I’m trying to get rid of them.”  
  
  
  


***

  
  
  
Pocho packs everything with meticulous precision. It’s not much. He’s never needed a lot and he has never enjoyed spending money on things he doesn’t need. He watches as people sent by Paula’s grandmother carefully wrap up about three dozen paintings to be shipped off; stands in his empty work room with only one canvas left in it and without second though, he puts his foot through it, tears up the blurred tiles and heavy curtains and the bathtub dripping with blood. His fingers only briefly touch the vague outlines of her dead form floating in scarlet before he shoves all the remnants into his fireplace and lights them up. And despite of smoke filling his nostrils, it’s suddenly easier to breathe.  
  
  
  
  
There is only one person Pocho thinks of telling. Mainly because she’d find out anyway. Also because he knows she is the only person who will not attempt to talk him out of it. When his flat is entirely empty and cleared out, sun up high and temperature high enough to boil, he drives to _Recoleta_ with his last bag in the trunk and a single plane ticket in the glove compartment. Pocho is hit with an unexpected burst of nostalgia when he walks up the stairs to the front door and realises that this might the be last time in a long time, especially when Paula opens the door, tanned and beautiful as always, in a white linen dress and her hair generously spilling over her shoulders. She puts her arms around his neck with a smile and presses close for a moment or two, her soft and sweet perfume filling his nostrils.   
  
“Javier’s not,” she begins but Pocho shakes his head and steps inside the hallway.  
  
“I know he’s not. Which is why I decided to come now,” he says and watches as her smile saddens visibly.   
  
“I’m sorry you two are –” but he waves her off.  
  
“Not your fault, so please don’t apologise.”  
  
She sighs. “I still feel like I should talk to him. But knowing him, it wouldn’t do any good,” and she leads him along the hallway and into the kitchen and he freezes in the doorway when he sees who’s sitting at the kitchen island, nursing a cup of tea.   
  
“I don’t want to interrupt anything,” he says immediately.   
  
Giannina raises her hand. “You’re not,” and it appears like she has a hard time smiling, but she tries anyway, almost manages before her expression crumbles again. She’s a stunning girl, but she looks terrible; blood-shot eyes and cheeks reddened from crying. Pocho doesn’t know her, has only seen her around once or twice, thinks he might have shared a class or two with her older sister, but he’s not sure. The only real connection they have is Kun, which is all sorts of fucked up; fucked up enough for Pocho to feel slightly uncomfortable.   
  
“I can go.”  
  
“Don’t be silly,” Paula says and pours him a cup of herbal tea, looks at him expectantly until he sits down and takes it. “Actually, I think it could be good to hear your opinion on this.”  
  
“On what?” he asks and already has a bad premonition about it.   
  
Giannina sniffs and Paula hands her a tissue. She wipes her eyes, balls it up between her palms and lets her eyes bore holes into it. “I’m pregnant.”  
  
Pocho sucks in a breath. His eyes go wide. “Oh shit,” he lets out before he can stop himself, but he can’t feel apologetic about it because, well – it sums it up pretty well. “Kun, huh?”   
  
Giannina nods, her eyes water and she presses her hands against them. Paula steps closer, starts rubbing calming circles against her back and gives Pocho a meaningful glance. He inwardly shakes his head, curses Kun to hell and back, and sighs.   
  
“And you can’t…?” He leaves the end open, because it’s clear what he’s insinuating.   
  
“I’m too far along,” she sobs, muffled by her hands. “It was before he – before you guys –”  
  
“It’s not an option,” Paula cuts in, thankfully. “And it’s all sorted out, but… Kun doesn’t know. And her parents don’t want him to know.” _I wonder why_ , Pocho thinks, but he doesn’t say it out loud. “He is going to be a father and I think he should know. Nina wants to tell him. But we’re not sure.”  
  
Pocho rubs a hand across his face, eyeing Kun’s ex-girlfriend whose rounded belly he can now see outlined through her wide top, if he looks carefully. Knowing why they’d broken up, Pocho doesn’t think he’s got any right to even be here. “Why do you want my opinion?”  
  
“Because you know him,” Paula says soberly.   
  
“I know Kun can’t even take care of himself,” Pocho replies, because it’s nothing but the truth. None of them can take care of themselves, to be fair, but it’s only Kun who’s managed to knock someone up so far. He fixes his gaze on Giannina and waits for her to look up. “Listen, he’s got a good heart. But Kun hasn’t even started to grow up and you don’t want your kid to grow up in an environment like that. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of people to support you, but Kun – even if you tell him – won’t be one of them.”  
  
He half expects her to break into tears again and it seems like that for a moment, but then something in her eyes hardens and Pocho knows that she understands perfectly what he’s talking about. After all, she knows Kun and she is a lot smarter than people give her credit for, Pocho is sure of that. She smiles at him, weakly but it’s a smile nonetheless, and gets up with a quiet groan. Smoothing her top down over her now very visible belly, she turns to Paula.   
  
“I need to head home,” she tells her. “But – thanks. For… you know.”  
  
“No problem, sweetheart,” Paula replies genuinely. “I’ll walk you out.”  
  
Pocho takes a deep breath once they’re gone, stares down at his trembling hands and forces himself to stay under control, because he’s not taking anything here, not in front of Paula. Paula comes back a few minutes later and sits down opposite him, taking Giannina’s seat.  
  
“Will she be okay?” he asks, can’t help but ask, because this isn’t a small problem that’ll just go away if it’s ignored long enough.  
  
“She will be,” Paula answers. “She’s finished school and her family’s there for her and – she’s tough. She’ll be a great mother.”  
  
“No doubt,” Pocho mutters and pushes his cup of tea away from him, herbal scents makes his stomach twist and turn. He sighs, once again, chest heavy and mind reeling, and decides to cut to the chase. “I’m leaving,” he says outright and watches Paula’s face squint up in confusion.   
  
“Where are you going?”  
  
“Paris,” he tells her. “Some exhibitions you grandmother wanted me to do for a while. I guess the timing’s a bit shit, but I need a change of scenery anyway.”  
  
“How long?”  
  
He shrugs. “No idea. Might stay for a while, do some work.”  
  
It all felt fairly unreal up to this point, he realises. But seeing that Paula is clearly upset puts a damper on his spirits, makes him understand that he might be leaving people behind; people who’ve been part of his life for a while and have taken up essential space that can’t be filled easily. She reaches across the table and grabs one of his hands, and Pocho can tell she’s fighting hard to keep her composure. It sends a sting through his chest.  
  
“Have you told Javier?”   
  
“I haven’t,” he says and shakes his head to emphasize. “I’m only telling you.”  
  
“Kun?”  
  
And this should definitely hurt less than it does. “No.”  
  
“It’s going to break his heart, you know that, right?”   
  
“That’s kind of the point.” And he knows that Paula gets it in that moment, and she doesn’t press further, just remains her perfect and understanding self, stroking a thumb lighting across the back of his hand. “I know. I’m a selfish bastard.”  
  
Something in her expression changes suddenly, and so profoundly that Pocho feels all air knocked out of him by her eyes practically digging into his chest, or perhaps his heart, he’s not certain.   
  
“Christ, Pocho. You’re not,” she breathes, taking his other hand as well, squeezing. “You have no idea how much you’re not.”  
  
  
  
  
Saying goodbye to her is hard. Getting onto a plane to leave his entire life behind on a whim is far too easy.  
  
  
  


***

  
  
  
Paris is a far cry from the place he remembers from his not-so-much childhood. Winter is firmly settled, the streets coated with icing sugary frost and the Seine shimmering with cold, icicles dangling below bridges and heavy freighters drifting along, blowing grey smoke into the clouded sky that hangs low over the city. And although there seems to be a memory attached to every corner, there is no mother whose coattails he tries to cling to with desperate fingers.   
  
He’s always had a self-destructive streak, an inexplicable need to punish himself for things he can’t even name (yet maybe this time he should punish himself for running away like a coward), so he books a room at The Ritz, ensures that it is the suite he spent his childhood being dragged into and out of. He passes his first day back in Paris after so many years sitting in the exact spot he’d been in when his mother had killed herself. He sits there and stares at the spotless tub, waits for its emptiness to overflow and turn the tiles scarlet.   
  
He waits. But nothing happens.   
  
It’s almost disappointing that he’d expected the city to freeze in time and to find that life and people move on as if nothing had ever happened. There are no old ghosts haunting the rooms of the suite he still refers to as some sort of home in the back of his mind; no trace that his mother had ever floated through them in embellished gowns, dripping wine and paint and dust wherever she walked. There are no remnants of toys that had been crushed beneath strangers’ feet, no rumpled sheets and splattered walls, wads of smoke collecting under the ceiling obscuring shapes, sharp laughter and glasses clinking and shattering on the floor. It feels strangely – cleansed.   
  
It’s no closure; he doesn’t need to say goodbye to her, doesn’t want to visit her grave and come to some epiphany regarding the meaning of life and death. He doesn’t reconcile with her either. But when Pocho sees fresh sheets and empty rooms, renovated hallways and polished surfaces, and listens to nothing but utter silence, he can feel something unhinge inside of his chest and it doesn’t much feel like running away anymore.   
  
He wanders the city and breathes it in and out, exhibits and sometimes paints and sells and talks, because here, his slate is not clean but unknown and his parents remain nothing but shadows banned into the farthest away corners. Pocho makes acquaintances (not friends) and spends days re-familiarising himself with the language and the mentality and nights drinking in impressions and faces and lives of people who still live for something, who are not trapped in a life that’s not theirs.   
  
It does him good. Surprising as it may be, but it does.   
  
  
  
  
He’d lie if he said that he thinks about Buenos Aires and its people a lot – about Kun. He barely does, filling his head with other things that don’t make him happy but disconnect him from the life he leads there. There is no reason for him to ponder on people that made him feel the need to leave. There is no reason for him to stop using, stop drinking, start sleeping and get clean, but Pocho stops feeling pressured, starts to feel like he can spread his arms wide without hitting anyone or anything by accident. So what if he attracts the interest and infatuation of a fellow Argentine studying at the local art school, with eyes like dark chocolate buttons and a profile as sharp as one of Bellini’s angels? So what if Pastore is like both of them rolled into one yet without the baggage?  
  
So what if there is something he just can’t let go of no matter how hard he tries?  
  
He drinks and eats and paints and sometimes he smiles.   
  
  
  
  
He stops counting the days.  
  
  
  
  
 _to be continued..._


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s not like he’s clean. Far from it, in fact, he is not in denial or anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Recreational drug and alcohol abuse
> 
> A/N: For dreamofthem and the_wild_son, who were always rooting for these two and requested their history to be told. Set in the same 'verse as By the Rio de la Plata, but stands entirely on it own. Sorry this took so long. Life has been crazy and weird. Feedback is much loved.

 

“It had hurt me that he hadn't looked back. I just didn't know it until now.”   
― [Sarah Hina](http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3428585.Sarah_Hina), [_Plum Blossoms in Paris_](http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/11094216)

 

***

 

 

It’s a memory so vague that he is now never sure if it actually happened, or if it’s always been a dream he only wants to be true because it is the only happy memory he possesses. He remembers a summer in Italy; green hills and old villas nestled between pine trees, sunlight breaking through in tiny speckles. He thinks it was hot not because of the heat on his skin but the smell in the air and the sounds surrounding their house, of cicadas rubbing their legs together and the occasional hint of wind threading through the branches. Perhaps he was there for a handful of days, perhaps even months, but all Pocho can recall is the feeling of absolute peace and quiet and balance – happiness. 

He remembers a narrow staircase out of century-old stones, moss creeping through the cracks, sparkling in the sun like it had been carved out of a single diamond; water bluer than anything he’d ever seen and so pleasantly refreshing when he dipped his feet in; and he had sat down on the last step and let his legs dangle, toes beneath the mirror-like surface, face tilted towards the sun.

 

(The reality is that his mother had dragged him off to Lago Maggiore, to an old villa that had once belonged to her late great-aunt, to hide from his father. She had spent a week in a comatose state, locked in the former master bedroom, surrounded by cloth-covered furniture and antiques, leaving a four-year-old Pocho to fend for himself. His father had found them after a week and his parents had spent the following days screaming at or ignoring each other. They had thrown vases at each other and innumerable insults, damning the other to hell and back and Pocho hadn’t understood – wouldn’t even remember it in the years that followed – but he had been sharp enough to realise that he hadn’t been wanted then (perhaps ever). So he had left the house and wandered the parks surrounding it and he had sat by the lake’s shore from sunrise to sunset, because it had been the only place where he couldn’t hear his parents’ screams.)

 

 

 

***

 

 

It feels strange to return to Buenos Aires, to touch down at Ezeiza at his own terms. Pocho realises that it would have been all too easy to stay in Europe for the rest of his life. And maybe it’s proof how twisted his mind still is to want to return to the place that had pushed him to the edge and almost over (he keeps thinking that perhaps he fell off of it a long time ago and it doesn’t make a difference anymore). But Pocho has stayed true to his own terms of entirely isolating himself from everything and everyone and he has not the slightest clue what everyone is up to these days and he has even less of a clue if he even wants to find out. Still, there it is again, that persistent, nagging voice in the back of his head and he does his best to shut it out when he steps through the doors of his deserted apartment that is still spotless and polished and as good as new, as if he had never left in the first place, which seems odd, to not even find a layer of dust on every surface.

 

He crosses his former bedroom and leans his forehead against the window. Below, they city is bustling, as unsettled by his return as Paris and now it’s almost a relief. The sky is grey and it’s getting dark and Pocho absentmindedly wonders how long it’s going to take for everyone to come barging back into his life – and if he is ready for that.

 

 

 

 

It’s not like he’s clean. Far from it, in fact, he is not in denial or anything. That’s never been his problem. No, Pocho has always been too aware of his own state of mind. So he knows that his mental framework is shaky at best and almost permanently on the verge of collapsing, only held together by a chain of pills that in- and decrease in accordance to his mood swings and various issues. His mind is as relaxed as it can be and right now, a glass of Vodka is enough to quench any arising anxiety, but it’s still a comfort to him to know that he’s got a small stash of painkillers and more or less legal tranquilisers in the inside pocket of his parka.

 

He hasn’t bothered switching on any lights and the only sound echoing through his lifeless apartment is the steady rhythm of raindrops hitting the windows. Some faint, barely there light catches on the rim of his tumbler when he lifts it up to wet his lips, to feel the harsh burn of alcohol down his throat and he absentmindedly wonders if he is damned to do this for the rest of his life; if he is stuck in a cycle that is bound to repeat itself, lingering in one place until it starts to throttle him, urging him to make a haste escape only to return like a criminal to the scene of his sins.

 

Pocho puts the glass back down, looks at the half empty bottle in thought and he shouldn’t drive after downing all that, but he’s never made good decisions, sober or drunk, and he feels reckless enough. He takes one of the cars that are still kept in the garage; one of the many he bought thinking he could spite his father even in death before he’d lost interest, and he weaves his way through sparse traffic, allowing the outside noises to lull him into a comfortable trance, barely remembers where and how he stops. His fingers flutter over touchscreen locks automatically, muscle memory providing the necessary codes and the storage cellars are cold, as dark as the night outside and he only allows the halogen lamps to flicker to life once he is standing in the almost achingly familiar room, looking at the painting he’d bought three years ago.

 

It’s unchanged, of course, safely stored behind bulletproof glass, and it exudes the same air of intrigue that drew him to it in the first place. Behind him, the door hinges groan and only a moment later does he feel delicate arms winding around his waist, a warm body pressing against his back and the soft scent of lavender reaches his nose.

 

“You’re back.”

 

Paula’s breath tickles his neck. Pocho doesn’t reply. Doesn’t need to either.

 

 

 

 

“So,” she says, stirring in her hot chocolate, steam rising up and momentarily blurring the contours of her face. “You were gone for quite a while.”

 

She looks different. Her hair is cut just shoulder length, softening her features and he knows that aging will look good on her, can imagine how she’d look in ten, twenty years. There is a pearl necklace draped around her neck he doesn’t know and he assumes it’s a gift from Javier, familiar with his taste, aware that this would be the kind of thing he’d surprise Paula with after a small spat. Pocho drops his gaze to his own cup – coffee, just black, no sugar – and spins it between his hands. Outside, rain keeps falling in the dark, dim lights in the small café not doing much to illuminate the room.

 

“I was,” he says superfluously.

 

“Why did you come back?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

Paula sighs heavily. “I really missed you, you know? We all did. And please don’t tell me that we shouldn’t have. You should have –” and she has to pause, swallows down a choke, averts her eyes. “You should have seen Javier’s face when he realised you were gone, when I had to convince him to not hunt you down straight away. And Kun –”

 

“Don’t,” Pocho cuts her off. “I had my reasons.”

 

“Undoubtedly,” she says. “But, regardless of anything – you look well, Pocho. You really do. I don’t know why you left, but I can see it did you good. And Christ, my grandmother… She was ecstatic, couldn’t stop talking once she got back from Paris. And she showed me your work. Don’t expect any flattery, because you know I think you’re brilliant. And your work is stunning.”

 

“But?”

 

“Why do you think there is a but?”

 

Pocho raises his brows. “I know that tone. That tone implied a but.”

 

She smiles. “All right. Fine. Your work is stunning. _But_ – I wish it wouldn’t make me this sad.”

 

That is something he hasn’t expected; not from her and it leaves him speechless, looking at her without being able to string any words together to form a decent reply, perhaps some kind of excuse or justification. While he rolls over syllables in his head, Paula reaches out and brushes the tips of her fingers across his forearm.

 

“Let me tell you something,” she begins quietly. “I tried to make sense of you for months after you’d left. And even after I’d given up on trying to understand you, I kept thinking of you. Just memories, you know? Little things you probably do without noticing. How you shrink away when there’s too much attention on you, closing one door after the other because you don’t want anyone getting too close. How you avoid Javier at all cost when I’m in the same room, pretending I’m unaware that he still loves you. How you snap at the guys when they go over the top because you worry and don’t want to admit it. I don’t want to psychoanalyse you, Pocho, and it’s not my place to do so anyway, but these sequences just keep flashing through my head and I let them, because I’m trying so hard, _so hard_ to remember your smile.” Paula takes a deep breath and her fingers encircle Pocho’s wrist, thumb pressing against his pulse. “And I can’t. And all this time you were gone I just – I just kept hoping that whatever it was you were doing was making you _smile_. Because I want you to be happy.”

 

“I don’t think I can be,” Pocho says after a moment of heavy silence, willing his heartbeat to stay even.

 

Paula squeezes his arm. “Try. Please. Promise me you’ll try.”

 

“I’m sorry, Paula,” he tells her, because he genuinely is. “I can’t.”

 

***

 

 

 

_“I’m telling you,” Javier drawls, words muffled by half a mouth full of Tequila. “I’m gonna… I’m totally gonna marry her. I know I just met her, but I am.”_

_“Good for you, man,” Pocho replies, taking the bottle back from Javier and popping a pill into his mouth. He doesn’t know what it is, but if he cared he would’ve stopped a couple of hours ago. “Good for you.”_

_“I – I really love her,” Javier continues, sinking back into the leather seats of the booth they’re occupying, looking more dishevelled than Pocho’s seen him in a long time and it makes something hot and feral uncurl in the pit of his stomach, makes him want to get his hands onto his friend and ruin him even further. “Not like – never like you, but – I do.”_

_His lips move before Pocho even knows what he’s thinking. “How do you even know that?” he asks, feeling hot and weirdly numb, cocooned. “I mean – you can’t know, can you? ‘s not something you can measure.”_

_Javier slouches against his shoulder and Pocho distractedly thinks that if his parents, if most people, could see him now, they probably wouldn’t believe their eyes. “I just do, okay? I just – I wanna strangle every guy who even looks at her the wrong way. I wanna punch everyone you take home when you’re not going home with me.”_

_Pocho hums around the bottle, swallows more Tequila, shifts so Javier fits against his shoulder more comfortably. “Jealousy, huh? No offence, but that’s a really shit measure for love.”_

_“Fuck off,” Javier tells him without much heat. “At least I know.”_

 

 

 

***

 

 

Pocho doesn’t go out for the first couple of days, blames it on jetlag and bad weather. He starts to unpack some of his boxes, builds a few more canvases and mixes paint to sketch a few first ideas, tries to recreate the unique swirl of black, grey and Prussian blue of the sky above Buenos Aires. Smoking a packet or two, he dips his brush into colours, breathes in and can almost taste them, enjoying the fact that the gates are still open and he is still pouring out all that’s been rotting away in hidden corners of his being. It’s still a relief, and it’s still an addiction, but it’s the best kind he’s even had.

 

Pastore comes over after a week, after seeing relatives in Córdoba, and Pocho fucks him on the living room carpet until there are angry red marks on both their backs. He’s relieved to discover that this is still without strings; just bare skin and cigarette smoke after, even if it does take a while for both of them to be willing to move. He looks at Pastore’s long limbs when he rises; the line of his back and the stretch of his shoulder and he guesses that were he more sentimental, he’d use him as a canvas, all flawless contrasts and perfect lines, skin tones melting together, tickled by dark curls falling into his face. He’s almost a piece of art, and perhaps that is one of the reasons why he’d caught Pocho’s eye in the first place, although he has no idea how it is the other way around.

 

Pocho gets up and pulls on his jeans, follows Pastore into the hallway where he is shrugging on his jacket, brushing a curl out of his eye, smile wide and all teeth.

 

“We should do this again.”

 

Pocho folds his arms in front of his bare chest and gives him a look. “We’ve been doing this for a year.”

 

Pastore shrugs, still smirking. “Well, we should keep doing it. When are you back in Paris?”

 

“No idea. I’ve got some loose ends here that need tying up.”

 

“Shame,” Pastore says, reaching for the door handle, pulling. “Let me know when you do.” He opens the door and promptly stills and Pocho, who can see straight over his shoulder, feels his heart involuntarily drop down to his ankles. “See you,” Pastore tells Pocho, unaware of the gravity of the scene he’s just leaving, pushing past Kun without as much as a second glance.

 

Kun is frozen to the spot, hand still raised as if he were about to knock on Pocho’s door, and he is staring at him with wide eyes and parted lips and Pocho can’t do anything but stare back, equally shocked, surprisingly breathless and at a complete loss. He is entirely aware that they were bound to run into each other again. But not so soon. This feels like far too soon. This feels like scar tissue getting ripped open and an old wound bleeding again although it shouldn’t. Two and a half years should have been enough.

 

He’s changed. He’s changed so much that Pocho feels it like a punch to his chest, forcing all air out of his body at once. Kun is broader than he was before and there is more confidence in his stance, a straighter line to his shoulder and more definition to his arms. Still clad in his usual jeans and plaid shirt and with diamonds in his ear providing a stark contrast to his tanned skin, the biggest difference is in his face, regardless of the neatly trimmed stubble he’s sporting now. Dark rings under his eyes, bloodshot and tired, pale despite colour. His expression is cut open, leaking out a wave of emotions that hits Pocho unprepared. He should have been ready for this; he should have but he isn’t and his mind is reeling because Kun right there – he looks broken. He looks so broken and he was supposed to be put together again by now.

 

Slowly, Kun lowers his arm to his side again, licks his lips before pressing them tightly together and Pocho can see his throat working as he swallows. He isn’t really sure what he’s supposed to do here, what he’s supposed to say, because he doesn’t think there’s anything quite suitable for their situation. Pocho wants to ask Kun to leave and he wants to invite him in; wants to push him away and pull him close and there it is again, that flutter of panic, that tightness in his chest, like a giant fist squeezing his lungs until they’re about to burst.

 

“Hey,” Kun eventually utters, barely audible.

 

“Hey,” Pocho echoes, suddenly painfully aware of his state of dress; unbuttoned jeans, no shirt. It’s obvious what he’s been doing and he shouldn’t be feeling bad that Kun knows that. But he watches as Kun’s eyes flicker down his bare torso (he’s added four more tattoos to his right arm and chest) and up to his face again.

 

“That your boyfriend?” he asks, not quite able to hide the bitterness in his voice, but this is enough to finally break the tension and Pocho snorts dismissively.

 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he tells Kun. “You know I don’t have boyfriends.”

 

Kun shrugs, trying to appear casual and failing horribly. “People change.”

 

“Not that much.”

 

They descend into a tense silence once more and Pocho doesn’t move, fixes his eyes on Kun’s face, watches him worry his lips, watches how he is trying to stay composed and bury everything deep down, yet he doesn’t quite manage. A sliver of anger remains visible in his eyes, laced with desperation and something else Pocho isn’t ready to name. Eventually, he sighs and takes a step to the side.

 

“D’you want a drink?”

 

Kun nods. “Yeah. Sure,” and he brushes past Pocho with tense shoulders, lingers in the middle of the hall and it only dawns on him then that Kun has never been in his apartment. That they had always fucked at Kun’s place. And it’s an odd feeling that suddenly overcomes him; odd enough that he finds himself unable to move for another couple of seconds because he needs to calm the fuck down before coming face to face with Kun.

 

He walks into the kitchen without turning around to see if Kun is following him, because he definitely is and he keeps his gaze cast down as he grabs the bottle of Scotch Pastore brought with him and is still untouched. Pouring the amber liquid into two glasses and pushing one across the kitchen island to Kun, Pocho takes a moment to focus on his breathing, to get his shit together, because he’s imagined shamefully many versions of this encounter and none of them were even slightly accurate. So he swallows half of the Whisky from his glass before he tilts his head up to meet Kun’s inquisitive and still nervous, wavering stare across the marble surface.

 

“So,” Kun begins, not having touched his drinks yet but holding onto the tumbler as if he were holding onto the only rope keeping him from drowning. “I didn’t realise you were back. Only found out yesterday.”

 

“I didn’t tell anyone,” Pocho says, but Kun is quick to object.

 

“You told Paula.”

 

“Practically, I didn’t tell her anything,” he replies. “I ran into her at the gallery, we talked.”

 

“I’d no idea you knew her that well,” Kun tells him and now he does drink, pulls a face and sets the glass back down. “I mean, I always assumed you and her weren’t on the best terms, since –” and he leaves the sentence open, ending self-explanatory.

 

“I introduced her to Javier,” Pocho says.

 

“Oh.” Kun can’t hide his surprise. “I didn’t know. You never… you never told me.”

 

Pocho huffs. “I didn’t tell you a lot of things,” and it hits home much like he intended. Kun visibly flinches at his words and after the initial reaction he narrows his eyes.

 

“I noticed. Especially when I didn’t see or hear from you for a week and had to find out through Diego that you had left the country. Continent, actually. So yeah, I kind of realised that I never had a fucking clue.”

 

“Was none of your business,” Pocho says, not defensively, because he doesn’t owe Kun an explanation, but Kun clearly differs. He frowns at Pocho, harsh line between his brows.

 

“Yeah, I figured you’d think so.”

 

“What do you want me to say, Kun?” Pocho can’t but snap at him, because he’s already tired of this. “What? Do you want me to say that I’m sorry? Because I’m not. I told you right when we met that you shouldn’t get attached and you did anyway. I’m not your fucking boyfriend; so don’t blame me for not running to you to ask for permission. It’s my bloody life and I can do whatever the fuck I want. I left because I wanted to and I came back because I felt like it and it’s got nothing to do with you. So please do me a favour and finally grow the fuck up.”

 

Kun visibly deflates. Pocho guesses he only just refrains from flinching back, seeing how Kun’s shoulders are shaking and his fingers are twitching. He grips the countertop so hard that sinews start to protrude whitely, even visibly in the half-lit kitchen. Pocho isn’t sure if he feels bad for yelling at Kun or for meaning every damn word of that. He guesses he’s left out some crucial parts, but Kun doesn’t need to know that. Pocho is barely grasping those things himself.

 

“Right,” Kun forces out, then his lips curve into a joyless smile and he meets Pocho’s gaze. “Guess I’m still stupid, you know. For thinking we’re friends or anything.”

 

It stings. Unexpectedly so, but it does. “Jesus, Kun,” Pocho breathes, running a hand across his face. “You know what I mean. Not everything I do is related to you.”

 

Kun slumps forward onto his elbows, rubs his neck, avoids his eyes again. “I know, I know. Sorry. It’s just – do you know how much it sucked without you? Do you have any idea what it’s like playing third wheel to Pipita and Eze? It fucking sucked. And – I just missed you.” He buries his face in his hands and for one terrifying moment Pocho is almost convinced that Kun is crying. But luckily his eyes are dry when he lifts them again. “I’m not in love with you anymore, okay? You made pretty clear what you thought of that and I don’t pine for a guy who doesn’t even like me that much, even if that guy’s you. But I – I mean, I hoped we were at least friends.”

 

Pocho looks at him for a long while. Kun’s face has softened again and he looks more like the person Pocho met a little more than three years ago. His eyes are still dark and deep and they still seem to have a magnetic pull to them, one that doesn’t allow Pocho to look away. And they absolutely do not weaken his resolve, because in spite of having no illusions who he is, Pocho is not that much of an asshole.

 

He sighs, again. “Damn it, Kun. Of course we’re friends. But you need to back off. If I decide to leave tomorrow I don’t need you crying your eyes out.”

 

“I didn’t cry my eyes out,” Kun objects.

 

“Right,” Pocho comments dryly and reaches for the Scotch to pour himself another glass. He digs out a packet of cigarettes from one of his drawers, takes one out, lights it, then slides it over to Kun. “Smoke?”

 

Kun takes the packet and flips it over in his hand. “Normal ones?”

 

Pocho can’t help but roll his eyes. “Jesus, you’re high anyway. Why would you care?”

 

And he guesses like that, they’re almost back to normal.

 

 

 

 

It’s not back to normal. And it’s not easy. Kun doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands, resorts to fiddling with his cigarette, with his shirt and jeans, meeting Pocho’s eyes for only fragments of a second because there is suddenly so much more space between them, ironically, and there are boundaries that probably need defining. So Kun is still strained, still keeping his elbows glued to his side because not being in love with someone doesn’t negate attraction and Pocho is not stupid, and he’s not embarrassed to admit that some of the tension between them definitely stems from a reasonable amount of desire. Pocho guesses he could give in, is relatively certain that Kun would in a heartbeat, but it is so much beyond a bad idea that he also keeps his hands by his side and instead focuses on the skyline in front of them.

 

Fortunately, it has stopped raining and the sun is setting, bleeding into the sky surrounding it, red and orange spreading like a drop of paint on a wet sheet of paper. They are sitting on his balcony in silence and Pocho knows that it will take more than just a little time for them to adjust. He doubts that it’s going to be this difficult with everyone else, because there has never been any doubt about boundaries and labels with them. Acquaintances, friends, full stop.

 

Javier maybe. Definitely.

 

 

 

 

Pocho guesses it’s nothing but sheer luck that he doesn’t unexpectedly run into Javier over the course of the next handful of days. He meets up with the usual suspects and it’s wonderfully uneventful, barely any questions asks, no odd looks, because his disappearance act is probably not the most unusual thing in their circles. Esteban eyes him for longer than the others, probably trying to determine if Pocho has lost the last inch of his sanity overseas, trying to analyse him once again, but he gives up pretty early into the night. He does a couple of lines in the bathroom with Pipita, catches up with Gabriel and Diego, a few others, but nothing much has changed and it’s strange, but Pocho expected as much. They’re all adrift, all floating through the night without any destination, and he tries not to notice that he and Kun start to gravitate towards one another before the sun rises and turns the city into a coppery landscape. 

 

 

 

***

 

 

 

Sometimes, when he allows himself to get sentimental, when he is lost in thought, Pocho wonders how different things might’ve been if his parents had been normal people; if his father had not been a self-centred egomaniac and his mother a manic depressive drug addict. He wonders how it would have been like to be born into a small but stable family, with parents who had married for something other than money, titles and the heat of the moment. In his mind, he is born in Italy and he grows up in a country house on the outskirts of Florence, close to his mother’s mother. His mother works from home, sculpts and paints and gives him a brush as soon as he can hold one and she lets him smear colours across the walls in her atelier. His father comes home on the weekends, bringing his mother gifts from all over the world. He showers him in attention and teaches him to swim, to ride a bike and lets him crawl into their bed at night when he can’t sleep.

 

Pocho thinks his parents move to Paris when his grandmother dies, because his mother needs a change of scenery. He starts school, learns French as well as Spanish and Italian and he plays football with his friends after classes finish.  His mother opens her own gallery and on weekends, he is allowed to stay up until midnight and look at her sculptures and listen to people praise her talent and he decides he wants to be just like her. His father is still away a lot, but when he’s home he devotes a lot of his time to helping Pocho with his homework and sometimes he loosens his tie and they kick a ball around in the backyard until his mother calls for dinner. They go on holiday to Italy and spent Christmas in Argentina. Pocho becomes a teenager and he is a difficult one but his mother is patient and his father is firm and he graduates top of his class, gets accepted into art school, brings home his first boyfriend or girlfriend.

 

He never sets foot in any club in Buenos Aires. He drinks sometimes and he smokes a lot, but he doesn’t take drugs because he doesn’t need them and his mother didn’t raise him that way. He briefly meets Javier, but they barely talk and don’t stay in touch, because Pocho stays in Europe for the next two or three holidays. He never meets Kun.

 

Javier meets Paula a few years later, they marry and have three children and eventually move to New York for Paula’s work. Kun stays with Giannina and they get married as well, have a son and relocate to Mendoza to run the vineyard of Kun’s late grandmother. Pipita will still go out and get drunk and high because Pocho is not that delusional, even when he daydreams.

 

He stills and he thinks about choices and actions and consequences until he remembers that none of them ever had any choice in the first place and that he would have ended up as a damaged nutcase either way and he feels paralyzed and anxious and his heart leaps and the feeling only subsides once he’s jammed a needle into his veins.

 

 

 

***

 

 

It happens almost naturally that they run into each other, some time around midnight on a Friday, in a club nobody can get into who’s not ready to spend a grand on a few bottles of Vodka. Pocho is weirdly sober. He actually feels a bit _bored_ , if he’s being entirely honest, and they’ve only been here for an hour or so. But it’s just so dull, in every meaning of the word; the people, the talk, the drinks. It could very well be that it’s always been this way and he’s just never been particularly bothered by it, too high to care, mind too clouded to really pay much attention to anything. Now he goes through odd phases of clarity, of sharp focus where his body only runs on nicotine and he can work for days at a time and it doesn’t quite fit anymore. He’s changed, perhaps just a little and perhaps more than he realised. That was the point of it all. Pocho is aware that he’s got a strong self-destructive streak but he’s not suicidal and he hopes that Paris has bought him another few years.

 

He feels detached, different from what he used to associate with that wording, not entirely out of place but not exactly in it either and he leans against the backrest of his armchair, one of many in Art Deco style, spread around the roof terrace, adding to the Old Hollywood décor of dark colours and strong line and between long-legged girls in gold dresses one could almost expect Fred Astaire to waltz onto the scene. Pocho takes another drag of his cigarette, having lost sight of Kun, and everyone else for that matter, right after their arrival, but he knows that Kun tends to look for him after a while, almost instinctively, because there is no way in hell Kun is still aware of what he’s doing; he’d already had pupils the size of needle heads even before they’d gone out.

 

A heavy hand lands on his shoulder, pulling Pocho out of his thoughts. He doesn’t need to turn his head to see whom it belongs to. Wordlessly, he holds out his packet of cigarettes and waits for Javier to sit down next to him, to take one out and light it, fire throwing a warm glow across his features and even with the night obscuring his contours, Javier is still so fucking beautiful. Pocho has always been drawn to him and they have been co-dependent for so long that even now, even after many fights and a forced break, it’s hard not to reach for him, to remain entirely indifferent.

 

He watches Javier for a couple of beats, then Pocho faces forward again.

 

“You took your time,” Javier speaks up eventually.

 

“Yeah, well. What can I say? Needed a break.”

 

“How was Paris?”

 

“Good.”

 

“You look good,” Javier says.

 

Pocho huffs out a laugh. “You coming onto me?” and he turns to face Javier again, who smiles delicately, barely there, thoughtful.

 

“Do I need to?” He quirks up an eyebrow, seemingly full of confidence but Pocho knows him better than that. Javier might be a charismatic person, suave and well spoken, unfairly gifted and attractive – but he has no idea who he is and in that way, he is not smarter than any of them. He doubts an awful lot and Pocho can sense his insecurity in his expression.

 

“You know you don’t,” Pocho replies. “But I don’t think we should pick up where we left off.”

 

“Certainly not. Last thing I remember, we weren’t exactly on the best of terms.”

 

Pocho looks at him pointedly. “You know what I mean.”

 

“Do I?”

 

“Don’t play dumb,” he sighs, blows some smoke in Javier’s direction. “It’s kind of unbecoming.”

 

Javier smiles. “Your face is unbecoming.”

 

“Oh, so we’re on that level now?” he asks, feels his lips twitching upwards. “And you missed my face, don’t even try to deny it.”

 

“Okay,” Javier replies quietly, almost solemnly, lifting the cigarette to his lips with long, elegant fingers and Pocho watches as his lips close around it, watches him breathe out smoke through his nose. “I won’t.”

 

They both let their eyes wander over the crowd again. Pocho can pick out Eze’s tall and broad frame somewhere close to the edge of the roof where the railing is overgrown, making it appear as if they’re in some garden instead of looking over the roofs of Buenos Aires. Eze is wearing sunglasses despite the fact that the night is pitch black already; huge frames that hide his most definitely blown pupils and blood shot eyes. He’s got the same earrings as Kun and Pocho wonders if that’s some sort of thing now, much like the precisely trimmed stubble and this look of casual indifference. They’re all putting on an act and surrounding Eze are plenty of people who’re buying into that.

 

But Pocho is tired – tired of it all. And bored, in spite of Javier’s presence because they’re all different, some more than others and their interrupted routines can’t just be resumed without errors. He should be content with a couple of drinks, some cigarettes, a spliff or two, and Javier next to him, but he _isn’t_. Pocho’s not sure. He thinks perhaps Paris has made him greedy.

 

Pocho gets up, ignores the persistent urge, that remnant of routine, to lean down and brush his lips against Javier’s when he tells him, “I’m leaving.”

 

Javier doesn’t say anything, doesn’t try to stop him, because he knows that Pocho is not going to be _gone_ again for a while; knows that even if Pocho wants to, he can’t stay away from him for very long. Pocho does loathe himself for it, that all this fucking time has done nothing to sever the ties binding him and Javier together and sure, it’s different, what isn’t? The fact remains that that fucking bastard occupies a place in his mind and will not make room for anyone else.

 

Pocho pushes past sweaty and scarcely clad people and heads for the bathroom down a long, dark hallway that’s barely lit, probably so nobody can see the filth that sticks to floor and walls. When he reaches the doorway, he has to pause and suddenly realises why he has seen nothing of Kun all night.

 

Kun has his back to one of the bathroom stalls, head tilted back, exposing his throat. He appears to be entirely out of it, completely gone. Pocho doubts he’s noticing much about his surroundings at the moment. Pipita is sitting to his feet, a delicate pipe between his lips. And Pocho is not an idiot. He’s smoked plenty of crack to know what kind of pipe that is.

 

“Kun,” he says without knowing why. It would probably best for all of them if Pocho would turn around and leave them to it. Pipita turns his head and smiles, but it’s off and his eyes are unfocused and Pocho’s pretty sure he doesn’t even recognize him right now. Kun doesn’t react at all, so Pocho steps closer. “Kun,” he repeats with more force behind his voice, “hey!”

 

The smell is poignant. Pocho tries to ignore it and steps around Pipita to stand in front of Kun and grab his jaw, still not eliciting any reaction whatsoever. “You’ll thank me later,” he mumbles to himself and then hits Kun square across the face. The collision echoes around the bathroom and Kun comes to it with a jerk, head rolling around wildly before he finds any focus, feet sliding on the tiles and only steadied by Pocho’s hand on his shoulder. Kun blinks a couple of times and his skin is almost unbearably hot, and his pupils flicker about before they zero in on Pocho’s face.

 

He smiles. “Ouch,” Kun drawls belatedly. “What’d you do that for?”

 

Pocho simply raises his brows. Behind him, Pipita is quietly coughing. “Seriously, Kun? Crack?”

 

Kun shrugs, like it’s no big deal and Pocho assumes it’s not, and it’s never been, and he’s actually not one to judge so he’s not sure what the fuck he’s even doing. “Pipita was out of coke,” he says and apparently it’s as simple as that.

 

Between bathroom stalls covered in bad graffiti and sinks clogged with soggy toilet paper, broken tiles and lingering smoke, Pocho shouldn’t expect to make good decisions. But in retrospect he’ll find that this is a particularly stupid one.

 

He drags Kun outside, is vaguely aware that Pipita stumbles out after them. On the way to Kun’s flat, the cab has to stop twice because Pipita has to throw up. Kun is a dead weight against Pocho’s shoulder the entire time. Grateful that Kun’s building has a lift, it still takes Pocho a long time to manoeuvre a half passed out Pipita as well as a beyond high Kun down the long hallway and through the front door.

 

The place is bare. Hardly lived in and clinically clean. The only personal touch evident is the white smears on the living room table. Without further ado, Pocho dumps Pipita on the couch and makes sure that he’s facing the floor, because choking on one’s own vomit is never a great way to go. When he turns around he sees Kun lingering in the doorway, looking dishevelled and slightly off, but not as zoned out as he’d been just half an hour ago. Crack never has a lasting effect.

 

“Do you have ice?”

 

“What?”

  
“Ice,” Pocho repeats as they slowly make their way towards the kitchen. “For your face. If you cool it, maybe you won’t get a black eye.”

 

“I have Vodka,” Kun says and points towards his fridge.

 

“Of course you do.” When he opens the freezer, it turns out that Kun actually has four bottles, and not much else. Pocho pulls one out and holds it out for Kun to take and press to his flushed face where one cheek is already showing shadows of a bruise. “So,” he starts again. “Crack.” Kun merely shrugs in response. “You’re an idiot, you know that?”

 

“Why?” Kun retorts and he’s almost cocky now, leaning against the countertop, one hand holding the icy bottle to his face, the other gripping his jeans-clad hip. “Like you’ve never smoked it. So don’t lecture me.”

 

“I’m not. Have fun, be my guest, but stick to the stuff you know. And don’t be stupid about it, or you’ll end up floating face down in the river because you’re so out of it.”

 

“Oh, come on,” Kun smirks. “Don’t be dramatic. It was fine. And just so you know, that did sound like a lecture.”

 

Pocho folds his arms in front of his chest, acutely aware that Kun is slowly but steadily moving closer. A soft thud reaches his ears when Kun puts the bottle down and stops a few inches in front of him.

 

“Well, what else do you want me to do?” and he realises the second he says it that is comes out rather dubiously.

 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Kun drawls innocently, but there’s a sudden sharp edge to his smile. He leans in. “You could fuck me.”

 

He exhales. “Jesus, Kun –”

 

“Shut up. Seriously. I mean… do you have any idea what it was like when you opened that door and I saw you again for the first time after two and a half fucking years. Fuck, the way you looked, and it practically reeked of _sex_ and I can just imagine how you fucked him.” Kun places a hand on his neck, still cold from the bottle, and drags it down, along with the collar of his shirt. “And damn, he was a pretty one, huh? One of your French boys?” and he huffs out a laugh. Pocho finds himself frozen to the spot and he can’t move a damn muscle because this Kun standing in front of him is so far away from when their first met. The contrast is so sharp that is seems to slice open his chest.

“Not that it’s my business. I bet you bent him over, bet you grabbed him so hard that he can still see your handprints on his hips. And you can bend me over too,” Kun practically breathes into his ear, hot body now flush against Pocho’s. “Grab me, mark me, _fuck_ me –“

 

Whatever it is Kun means to add, Pocho never hears it. He seizes Kun by the neck and crashes their mouths together hard enough for their teeth to collide, sending a sharp pang of pain curling down Pocho’s spine before Kun tilts his head and moulds their bodies until they fit. Pocho grabs a handful of shirt and bunches it up, rakes blunt and still paint-stained nails up Kun’s torso and determinedly pushes against him. They tumble out of the kitchen and into the hallway and Pocho bites down on Kun’s lower lip, making him hiss. Shoulders brushing against the plastered walls, feet stumbling and stepping and sliding, leaving a trail of shirts and belts and shoes and socks.

 

Pocho feels unfocused and sharp all the same and there is a thrumming cursing through his bodies that makes him want to peel his own skin off because it is almost unbearable, and he feels achingly out of breath, emptied of all air when they fall onto crumpled sheets that smell of smoke and weed and lemon and sex and fuck knows what Kun’s been doing in his bed. Pocho guesses he’s been naïve and a fool for think that Kun wouldn’t find someone else and he suddenly realises that he’s never wanted that in the first place; that some small part of his mind has been convinced, the entire time, that Kun would wait for him and maybe Pocho had wanted him to. It tastes bitter and every bit like the bad idea this is and yet he can’t stop. He is unable to untangle himself from the hot, muscular limbs that hold him tightly and he can’t lift his head from where it’s still buried in the crook of Kun’s neck.

 

Kun’s moans are obscenely load and his hands wander shamelessly across Pocho’s body, already slick and tensing up and if he didn’t know any better, Pocho would think he were on the best fucking MDMA on the market.

 

But Pocho has only had a few drinks and he’s far too sober to be doing this. He’s not high or delirious. He actually _wants_ this. And it scares the living crap out of him.

 

 

 

 

It’s still early morning when he wakes up. Kun is still passed out, mostly hidden by mountains of pillows and blankets, breath soft but solid. Pocho forces the spreading tremor in his system down, needs to repress it until he’s home and can do something about it. He gathers his things, quietly, quickly, and is just tying his shoes when a sound startles him and he looks up. Pipita is still on the couch, head upside down and peering at him from beside the backrest. His gaze is disturbingly sharpened and he eyes Pocho with that weirdly familiar blunt and serious look.

 

“I told you,” he suddenly speaks up and Pocho almost jerks back.

 

“Told me what?” he presses out and his voice should most definitely not sound weaker than Pipita’s.

 

“That you’d break his heart,” Pipita replies soberly.

 

Pocho huffs. “So what?” He’s pretty sure he’s never been less convincing.

 

“I’m just saying. Don’t be surprised if he breaks yours to get even.”

 

 

 

 

 

tbc


End file.
